Addition of Olfactory Stimuli to Virtual Reality Simulations for Medical Training Applications

Abstract : During the first year of the program, preliminary delivery systems for olfactory display in virtual reality systems were developed and tested in an HMD system, a small booth environment of the appropriate size for desktop surgical training, and a larger CAVE-sized environment. Two design approaches to more advanced delivery systems have also been defined. In the case of the HMD system, odor display has been integrated with a simple virtual environment. In this format, it has been found that associating odors with graphic objects and varying their concentration with the distance of the use's head from the source is more convincing than when odors that are depicted as part of an ambient environment A first cut of a wireless tracking system that can support experiments with olfactory display as part of physical behavior has also been implemented and tested. The odors needed for medical training were surveyed and a working set of odorants were identified or developed in sufficient quantities to support further testing. Extensive studies were performed that determined that odors have a positive effect on the performance of some spatial reasoning tasks, but do not to provide any benefit on the performance of manual dexterity tasks.