Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation on Odor Dispersal to Develop High-Presence Olfactory Display

摘要

The olfactory display is a device that delivers smells to the user's nose. It can be used to add "special effects" to a movie by releasing smells relevant to scenes in the movie. It is also expected to be used with virtual reality systems to enhance the presence of the virtual world experience. In order to provide high-presence olfactory stimuli to the users, the display must be able to generate realistic smells with appropriate intensities in a timely manner together with visual and audio playbacks. In this paper, we propose to use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation to develop a high-presence olfactory display. The dispersal of an odorant in a virtual world is simulated using a CFD solver to determine the timing for the release of a smell and its intensity. Simulation results are presented to show that real-time calculation of odor dispersal with fair accuracy is feasible at least for a simple virtual world.