Ohio State University researchers have built a system they call "Scentronic" that can detect a smell in one place and recreate it for someone else anywhere in the world, according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances. The technology pairs an "electronic nose" that recognizes everyday scents like coffee and oranges with a small wearable device that releases matching fragrance molecules at the other end, potentially adding smell to the video calls and digital experiences that currently carry only sight and sound.
The Missing Sense of the Internet
People already share images and sounds digitally with billions of smartphones, as the Reuters report on the study notes — but smell has stubbornly refused to come along for the ride. That gap is not for lack of trying. Inventors have been chasing scented media for nearly a century: Hans Laube unveiled "Smell-O-Vision" at the 1939 World's Fair and used it for just one commercial film release, the 1960 movie "Scent of Mystery," before technical problems and poor word of mouth buried the idea. Research on "electronic noses" that detect odors has continued since the early 1980s, and scientists have built scent displays for virtual reality for years — including a 2006 Tokyo Institute of Technology system that blended 32 odor components, and a 2020 necklace-sized device called Cilia that emits scents from six vials for VR users. None of them, however, ever put odor sensing and odor generation together in one compact platform for sharing smells remotely.
That is exactly the gap the Ohio State team set out to close. The study, led by doctoral student Chunyu Yang in materials science and engineering, describes what the researchers believe is the first integrated system of its kind. "What makes Scentronic different is that it brings odor sensing and generation together for remote sharing," Yang said. "To the best of our knowledge, our study is the first to explore this integration in a compact platform for remote odor sharing."
How Scentronic Works
The system starts with an "e-nose" — a device roughly six inches (15 centimeters) across that uses an array of gas sensors to detect the chemical compounds associated with different odors. A machine-learning model then classifies what the e-nose has picked up, matching it against the smells it has been trained to recognize: beer, cake, coffee, oranges and red wine.
Once identified, the odor information travels over an online platform to a scent generator at the receiving end, which releases fragrances to recreate the aroma. The scent molecules themselves are not transmitted over the internet — only the digital instruction to recreate a recognized smell.
The researchers built several versions of the receiving device, including wristband, necklace and handheld designs, according to the report. The e-nose itself is portable, though not designed to be worn. "In simple terms, it connects 'smelling something here' with 'recreating the corresponding smell somewhere else,'" Yang said. The communication can span any distance, "from across the room to around the world." And the point, Yang said, is to enrich the media people already share: "The idea is to add smell to the visual and audio information we already share remotely, making those experiences more engaging."
Everyday Odors Only — For Now
The system's vocabulary is currently limited to just five scents, and the researchers are candid about why. "We chose these because they are familiar everyday odors with different scent profiles, making them useful examples for demonstrating the system. We have not yet expanded beyond those categories," Yang said.
Expanding the library, he cautioned, is not simply a matter of adding more training data. "A broader scent library is possible in principle, but an unlimited repertoire is far beyond what we have demonstrated," Yang said. "Recognizing an odor and accurately reproducing it are separate challenges. Covering a useful range of everyday scents is a more realistic goal, although that would still require substantial development."
The receiving device cannot recreate every smell the e-nose encounters. Supporting new odors would require both training the electronic nose to recognize them and loading the generator with the corresponding scented liquids. "To support additional odors, we would need to train the electronic nose to recognize them and provide corresponding scented liquids in the odor generator," Yang said.
What This Means
The potential uses the researchers sketch out go well beyond novelty. Someone could share the scent of a home-cooked meal with family or friends living far away. Virtual and augmented reality experiences could become genuinely immersive — a forest scene that smells of pine, a game that lets a virtual cook smell the virtual dish. Online shopping is another candidate: customers could sample selected scents remotely before buying, a leap for perfume and fragrance retail in particular.
For now, though, the work belongs in the lab. The research was conducted and the devices developed without the involvement of a company, Yang said. "At present, this is a research prototype."
What Happens Next
Getting from prototype to product means solving a list of hard problems, and Yang laid them out plainly: a larger, more diverse training dataset, reliable odor recognition under real-world conditions — where smells almost always arrive in mixtures, not isolated notes — and a generator that can support more scents while staying compact and convenient. Then there are the practical questions of scent fidelity, refillability, durability, manufacturing costs, and the safety of repeated exposure to the scented mist.
Could the technology eventually live in a smartphone, so that a person at a tailgate party before an Ohio State football game could share video, audio and the aroma of hot dogs on the grill with a friend at home? In principle, a phone could connect to a scent-generating accessory, Yang said — but building everything into the phone itself "would be more challenging because the scent reservoirs, electronics and atomizers all take up space and add weight. Miniaturization and convenient refilling would be important considerations."
And the tailgate example remains firmly hypothetical for now. "The tailgate example illustrates the idea well," Yang said. "Our current system has not demonstrated the transmission of a grilling-hot-dog scent or the exact mixture of smells at a tailgate party."
Still, after nearly a century of failed attempts to bring scent to digital media, Scentronic represents something the field has rarely had: a working, compact system that treats smell as a message that can be sent, not just a special effect in a theater. Whether it ever leaves the lab, it has proved the concept that the internet's missing sense might finally be within reach.
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