Abstract
Nowadays, industrial training is gaining popularity, and in particular, Virtual Reality (VR) technologies are often adopted to recreate training experiences that can transform the learning process by exploiting the concept of learning by doing. Moreover, VR allows us to recreate realistic and immersive environments that provide trainees with hands-on experience in a safe and controlled setting. One of the advantages of using VR technologies to perform training simulations lies in the ability that these tools offer to mix different senses as if they were independent variables and to manipulate them one at a time. In this way, the effects of using one sense on the specific task under analysis can be discovered in a controlled scenario in which the others are controlled. One of the least used senses in VR is undoubtedly that of smell. In this paper, we intend to use a new olfactory device specifically designed to be adopted with VR technologies, integrate it with an immersive VR training application, and propose a series of uses allowed by this combination. In the paper, we report the details of the multisensory approach that integrates the different senses. Additionally, the paper presents the findings of a pilot experiment conducted to validate the adopted approach and assess the results. The study demonstrates that the developed Olfactory Display had no adverse impact on users’ interaction with VR content.
