Is it possible to transmit and receive smell?

A plausible way to receive smell is to get a olfactory implant similar to a cochlear implant.

This implant would stimulate the appropriate nerves to produce the desired "smell" or "taste"

Transmission would be to select the desired sensation.

An olfactory implant would be awfully invasive.  I doubt many people would want to  crack open their skull to gain the ability to receive smells.  But what do I know, the world is changing....

Thank you guys for your valuable comments. I will post my project based on this once it gets finished.   

I am almost half-way through but I couldn't figure out how to use chemicals to reproduce smell. Can anyone help me in that?

Well it will be harmless if we make a wearable kind-of-stuff, instead of an implant. That wouldn't be invasive.

Another alternative is to hook up a variety of capacitors, resistors and ICs at the transmitter end and have a matched pair at the receiving end.

For the resistors you can pump in enough power for them to burn on demand and get the transmitter to send a code that correlates to that event.

At the receiving end the receiver is configured so that upon receiving that code it too will apply the same power to its resistor to get the same smell.

For the ICs and capacitors you can do likewise.  For tantalums excessive voltages can create fireballs that can shoot through the air.  Electros can fill the room with fluff.  ICs can create funny burning smells.

If I could "like" this a million times I would!  Awesome!

Machine Learning can be the best way to identify smell correctly. Does anyone know any classifier machine learning algorithms that can be used? Put your suggestions.

It is possible to measure smell and transmit the results, but you would then have to synthesise the smell, which may be possible with a limited palette of smells.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_nose

Many years ago I worked on a project with Aromascan to make an odour measurement instrument based on chemically sensitive MOSFETs.

I have done a lot of work on chemical detection - mostly hazardous or dangerous chemicals, but the technologies are similar for any substance. Airborne (smells) particle and gas identification is quite a bit easier than some of the problems I was investigating, like remotely detecting hidden explosives. Still not easy of course, but technology exists to do it. One of the most promising technologies for general purpose low-cost mobile applications is MEMS IMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems, ion mobility spectrometer).

Once the smell is identified it is easy to transmit the data.

Then there is re-creating the smell at the receiver. You could conceive of a machine that used a coupe of different methods:

1. a library of canned smells in vials that get released as needed (this is limited by the number of vials you could store in your machine, but the more expensive the machine the more vials would be embedded) This would eventually end up as cartridges containing thousands of smells.
2. a mini chemistry lab that synthesizes smells by chemical processing of base chemicals. This method can produce  a wide variety of smells from a small number of constituents. It seems most flavours can now be artificially synthesized. The process just needs to be miniaturized. Again the consumable chemicals could be made available in cartridge form. This also brings up the possibility of making your own smells and perfumes - you just need the app.
3. the two methods could be combined - store smells that are hard to synthesize and create the ones that are easy using chemistry

Doug

Can you mention some base chemicals...

Douglas Wong wrote:

 

1. a mini chemistry lab that synthesizes smells by chemical processing of base chemicals.

Thank you for your help Doug