This App Smells?

Tech gurus have cracked the codes for apps to help with almost anything. There are apps for dating, working out, using the bathroom during a movie — but what about an app for smelling?

As strange as it sounds, apps revolving around the sense of smell have long been in development and have just started to make some real steps towards reality.

The problem with apps and technology needing to detect scent is that the sense of smell is far more complicated than many like to imagine.

Redg Snodgrass, a venture capitalist investing in the arena of scent hardware, recently contemplated the benefits to smelling apps while speaking to Reuters. He mentioned a wealth of far off possibilities — like a smelling-based app being able to detect disease early on or even fear in a terrorist.

Snodgrass is currently funding a project called Tzoa — a wearable technology that can measure air quality. It’s something that could potentially do a lot of good in places that suffer from significant air pollution, like China.

Another project called Nima raised $9 million this year. Its goal is to be able to measure things like gluten and protein in food.

Both projects base their features off of the sense of smell — something companies have been trying for years to crack and develop into beneficial technological features. Past attempts from companies to enter the arena of scent-based technologies have mostly stalled or failed to progress to any practical stages.

The problem with apps and technology needing to detect scent is that the sense of smell is far more complicated than many like to imagine. “It’s been suggested that the human nose can discriminate 1 trillion different odor combinations. A device to match that capability is probably decades away,” Dr. Avery Gilbert, smell scientist and author of the book “What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life,” told LifeZette.

The reason smell has not been effectively used in the field of technology is because, unlike light and sound, it is a mass, rather than an energy.

The complexity of different smells complicates matters when trying to create a product that can detect a wide array of odors. Each smell consists of many different and unique components, making it difficult to create any sort of miniature or useful technology that fully manipulates the sense of smell.

Still, entrepreneurs like Snodgrass are betting big that the technological field of smell is taking its first real and practical steps with new technology. EssenceChip, for example, is a new technology from company Aromyx that is working to help food companies develop digital signatures for various food items — based on scent.

Related: 10 Great Apps For New Parents

Other technologies have had better luck with emitting smells rather than detecting them. Cyrano, a portable, speaker-like device, was recently launched by Vapor Communications.

“Cyrano is a small, personal, consumer electronics device that can remotely play sequences of scents called mood medleys. Each scent in a mood medley lasts up to a few minutes, long enough for the scent to be perceived by the user while short enough to avoid the olfactory fatigue associated with traditional scent technology, such as candles and air fresheners,” announced Vapor Communications in a statement.

Beyond emitting smells, one company seems poised for success in detecting scents by focusing their sights on a smaller, stinkier target. German company Nivea recently announced NOSE, a phone cover that, when paired with an app, warns men about their body odor.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih2X5GUXUGM”]

The specific focus on male body odor came after a popular study found that the part of the brain that detects smells is 40 percent smaller in most men than in women. The phone cover has yet to be released, but its focus on a specific smell could be the first step towards some of the bigger ideas many technological dreamers around the world have.

However, if there’s one business that can be used as a horror story to scare off those wishing to enter the business of smells, it’s none other than Hollywood. Many may not remember Smell-O-Vision, but the failed idea no doubt still makes some producers quiver — and makes others wary of the notion of moving a film into the fourth dimension with smell.

Some smell patterns are associated with various types of cancer.

After shakeups in distribution in the industry and television diverting attention from theaters, Hollywood was desperate to get people buying movie tickets again. 1958’s “Behind the Great Wall” used a new technology called AromaRama, sending various scents connected to the film through the theater’s air conditioning. People hated it.

Still, the failure did not stop some desperate producers. They tried again with the infamous Smell-O-Vision used for the 1959 film “Scent of Mystery.” Smells were produced through vents in the theaters. Unfortunately, the technology barely worked, and people again rejected it.

Since then, filmmakers and distributors have only occasionally delved into scents for their films — mostly with scratch-and-sniff cards used by directors, like John Waters with 1981’s “Polyester.”

Though with recent steps in scent technology — and theaters beginning to incorporate 4D showings of films (which include things like mist and shaking seats) — some Smell-O-Rama update could be in Hollywood’s future.

Dr. Gilbert says the pie-in-the-sky dreams some have for smelling apps and technology are still a long way off, but smaller steps could reap real benefits.

“What’s more achievable are applications that recognize specific smells like leaking gas or sour milk. Medical diagnostics is another promising area: There are smell patterns associated with various types of cancer, for example. A medical scent-scanner would be a high-value innovation and relatively easy to develop.”