This is pretty interesting for research in multi-modal interfaces. There's a lot of stuff already done with visual, auditory and haptic feedbacks, but not so mu

This is pretty interesting for research in multi-modal interfaces. There's a lot of stuff already done with visual, auditory and haptic feedbacks, but not so much with smells and taste because there is no equivalent to screens & speakers for those senses yet. Coincidentally (or not?), chemoperception (taste and smell) seems to be the oldest mechanisms developed for perception. There could be many mechanisms anchored within ourselves that we haven't been able to grasp and map out since we have had limited ways to do research on them. Links between smell and memory, for example. Or what possibilities arise from the combination of 350 different known types of smell cells (and a total of 50 million cells in a human nose IIRC). The link between smell and taste is also quite interesting, so I hope this gets to be studied better in the future. I might be biased by past experience in Japan, but it seems like all the creative research in these fields emerges more frequently from Japan than anywhere else. Are there equivalent programs in the US or Europe?