Imaginé par Luis Angarita, David De La Torre et Andres Zapata du studio international spécialisé dans l’innovation CD&I Associates, le concept Sense est un dispositif doté d’une surface qui reproduit une expérience tactile, permettant ainsi de percevoir les propriétés physiques, thermiques et haptiques d’un produit qui apparaît sur un écran d’ordinateur via internet ou toute autre source multimédia. Disposant également d’un système d’émanation d’odeur, il permet ainsi aux consommateurs d’examiner de manière complète un produit vu sur un site marchand et de totalement transformer l’expérience d’achat en ligne. Un concept plutôt intéressant, récompensé d’un Red Dot Award Design Concept en 2009, à découvrir en détails dans la suite !

Plus de détails en images dans la galerie

Description originale

SENSE is a futuristic interactive device that allows the user to have a sensorial experience of websites, movies, and games via smell, taste, and touch.

Imagine if you could smell, touch, and taste something that you are viewing on your computer screen. Surfing websites, Internet shopping, and gaming would take on whole new dimensions of experience. SENSEimagines a future where this is possible.

SENSEis a wireless interactive product with a touch-sensitive screen. It creates a tactile experience of the physical, thermal, and haptic properties of the items on one’s computer screen. It also contains a smell magnification and taste system. SENSEcontains micro-printer with scent- and flavour-based ink. It offers thirteen different wax cartridges that print and melt simulated flavours in order to create an interactive experience of what is on screen.

Five cartridges contain the fundamental flavours – sour, bitter, sweet, spicy, and salty. An additional « enhancement » cartridge allows one to perceive the meat flavours, fatty flavours, and the « umami » flavour (which was discovered by the scientist Kikunae Aqueda at the beginning of the last century, and which is attributed the taste characteristics of Asian foods such as seaweed soup and soy sauce).

The flavour cartridges are combined with seven wax cartridges that contain the basic smells that exist in nature. classified as floral, mint, ethereal, camphor, musk, spicy, or putrid, These allow the creation of any possible combination. SENSE prints small translucent tasting sheets that dissolve in the roof of the mouth. These small degustation sheets are combined with the smells that the micro-emitters expel as the wax from the cartridges melts and the scents combine.

SENSE has a touch-screen display that provides for easy and agile manipulation of information, as well as the creation of the tactile experiences of the selected products on the website, or in the movie or game. The user inserts their hand into the SENSE sheath and feels different impressions such as temperature, roughness, softness, hardness, or pressure. Nanotechnology makes this possible. The many nerve receptors in the hand translate the different types of stimulations into information that can be interpreted by the brain. SENSE also can be used to read Braille text, and can be programmed with voice.

New SENSEapplications can be downloaded from Internet. It is envisaged that a sensorial experience will encourage a more emotive connection between the user and the product being viewed via digital media.

Credits & copyright CD&I Associates – via