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How
TriSenx Makes Sense
Just when you thought you’ve
and it
all, there is new technology available to help
you and
it too.
Over the Internet that is. Ellwood Ivey, President
and CEO of TriSenx Corporation, along with a
qualified team of specialized engineers and
scientists, has developed the technology that
allows smell and taste simulations over the
Internet. Before TriSenx, Inc., the Internet
experience was limited to visual and audio stimulations.
TriSenx takes that experience to the next level
enabling all the senses to be a part of the
Internet. We had the opportunity to interview
Mr. Ivey to find out more about this groundbreaking
technology and how it was developed.
Mr. Ivey has been working on the technology
for artificial sensory experience as early as
1991 through research for alcohol detection
under the Driving Under the Influence Eliminator
(DUIE) program. By 1996, Mr. Ivey proposed the
idea of being able to extend the sensory technology
developed for DUIE over the Internet. By 1999,
Mr. Ivey and his group realized the fit between
this technology and the worlds of on-line gaming,
e-commerce and education and filed patents for
both the hardware and software.
Because of TriSenx’s innovations, the
amount of consumer aromas available to the mass
market has grown from a base of eight to over
six hundred and fifty. And that’s in the
area of fragrance alone. Since then, TriSenx
has been working closely with such institutions
as North Carolina AT&T and NASA to bring
their technology to the mass consumer.
TriSenx
stands for 3 Sensory Enhanced Net Experience.
We perceive our world through 5 senses, as opposed
to 2, and bringing the other 3 elements—smell,
taste, and touch to the multimedia experience
was our goal. Development of the technology
to make this happen began in 1999, with our
primary focus on the fragrance industry, as
well as distributors and marketers of fragrances.
Ivey: Actually, before we could gauge the effect,
in April of 2001 TriSenx switched gears and
began focusing on the education sector, which
we found would adopt and integrate this technology
into an immersive learning environment. We’ve
formed a memorandum of understanding with NASA
to provide virtual reality stimulations to enhance
the learning experience for students in grades
for K-12. TriSenx provides the technology while
NASA develops the educational content. It’s
been studied and verified by scientists all
over the world that aroma evokes memory, therefore
making aroma a powerful tool.
Because
of our research and experiences with other projects
prior to TriSenx, we understood early on that
fidelity of aroma would be a major factor. To
that end we sought out to develop a diffuser
that would deliver the aroma in close quarters
with other aromas. For example, imagine vaporizing
an oil reservoir (full of oil) using a diffusing
mechanism in conjunction with a multi media
application such as a car game. Vaporizing a
rubber smell because the car is screeching across
the road, burning rubber, then immediately you
creating the aroma of flowers because the automobile
passes a huge field of flowers. Going from aroma
to aroma created quite a problem because there
was no way get back to a base temperature once
the entire reservoir was heated thermally. We
decided to isolate the section of oil to be
vaporized, which we did with a capillary* system,
so we actually inserted a vapor coil inside
a very small glass capillary. In doing so, we
were isolating the oils, which was a major step
in our progression. This allowed aromas to be
cleared and diffused rapidly also enabling us
to build a very effective prototype. Through
this process we quickly gained the reputation
as the company with the technology to simulate
aromas, and we were able to take the capillary
pump system and strike a licensing deal with
several oil housings.
Great
Question! For 30 years the oil housings used
the wick thermal system that you see in such
products as the Glade plug-ins. The systems
require alcohol and other subactants (carrier
elements) in order to lift the oil through the
wick system, and dispense the aroma through
the air. It turns out the majority of the fragrance
oils that are used in those systems do not mix
well with alcohol which limits the number of
aromas that they can supply to consumers.
Ivey: Absolutely! We opened the door for oil
housings to offer the consumers over 650 different
aromas, compared to only 8 before our system
was developed.
Well,
if a baker or perfumer has a website for example,
by sense enabling that website the baker can
sell a lot more bread than if he wasn’t
able to articulate that product for his customers.
Therefore by sense enabling a product by, say,
smell for the perfumer or taste for the baker,
customers can sample products over the Internet
and they are going to sell a lot more product.
Our
first and foremost focus is on education. Education
will be our first marketplace. What has happened
in the interim since the Internet implosion
is that organizations are looking for “practical”
ways to employ this technology on the Internet.
Our bridge into the world of education will
be through NASA and North Carolina AT&T.
The
issue from a strictly business standpoint is
that we need to get as many Trisenx hardware
peripherals on desktops as quickly and as efficiently
as possible. Our strategy is to get our equipment
in as many classrooms as possible.
That
has been the strategy of a similar company to
ours named DigiSense. They teamed with a broadband
provider out of Silicon Valley to provide hardware
units and get them onto as many desktops as
possible; however, we designed our technology
so that broadband is not required to run our
product.
In
4 years I see our product being as ubiquitous
as the computer speaker. The feedback we’ve
gotten from the companies in education and e-commerce
believe this technology will enhance their bottom-lines
significantly.
*A capillary is caused by a natural lift. For
example, when a straw is placed inside of a
glass full of water, the water lifts naturally
into the straw before sucking begins.
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