Audio-Activated Scent Generation via Hashed Fingerprint Matching
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing methods for synchronizing scents with audio signals require additional communication channels, making them costly and difficult to implement, and often necessitate pre-processing of audio signals, which hampers the user experience by delaying scent release during meaningful audio events.
Innovation Solution
A method that extracts fingerprints from audio signals, hashes them to generate hash codes, and matches these codes against a database to identify audio-meaningful events, releasing corresponding scents without needing extra communication channels, using atomizers and computing processors to selectively vaporize scent-generating substances.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If additional communication channels are used to transmit scent synchronization information, then scent release can be synchronized with audio events, but system complexity and implementation cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the scent synchronization information directly into the existing audio signal by embedding watermarks during audio encoding. This eliminates the need for separate communication channels, as the scent control data is carried within the audio stream itself, thereby reducing system complexity while maintaining synchronization reliability
Solution Approach 2:
The audio signal serves multiple functions: it carries both the audible content and the embedded scent synchronization watermarks. This multi-functionality allows the same communication medium (audio channel) to transmit both sound and scent control information, eliminating the need for additional dedicated channels
2Reliability
If audio signals are pre-processed to embed watermarks for scent synchronization, then scent release can be synchronized with audio events, but user experience deteriorates due to delayed scent release
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by embedding the scent synchronization watermarks during the audio encoding stage, before the audio content is stored or transmitted. This advance preparation ensures that when the audio is played back, the scent synchronization information is already available in the audio stream, enabling immediate scent release without additional processing delays
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the mechanical pre-processing step (separate watermark embedding before playback) with an integrated digital embedding approach during encoding. This substitution allows the watermark information to be seamlessly integrated into the audio bitstream, eliminating the need for separate pre-processing steps that would cause delays
3Measurement precision
If complex computation algorithms are used to detect and classify audio-meaningful events, then event detection accuracy improves, but implementation difficulty and computational cost increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential features needed for scent synchronization from the audio signal, rather than performing comprehensive audio analysis. By focusing specifically on detecting watermarks embedded during encoding and identifying basic audio-meaningful events, the system achieves sufficient detection accuracy with simpler, more efficient algorithms
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies partial action by implementing only the necessary level of audio event detection and classification required for scent synchronization, rather than performing exhaustive analysis. This selective approach maintains adequate detection accuracy for scent-related events while significantly reducing computational complexity and implementation difficulty
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
Enables real-time synchronization of scents with audio signals, enhancing user experience by simplifying computation and reducing storage requirements, allowing immediate scent release during meaningful events without pre-processing, and facilitating practical implementation.
Implementation Method 1
hashing the plurality of feature points to yield a hash code having a fixed length and a smaller size than the plurality of feature points
Implementation Method 2
releasing each scent-generating substance in the list associated with the matched audio-meaningful event to generate the scent
Data Source
AI summary
Time-varying scent determined by audio-meaningful events, such as gun firing, in an audio signal is generated by first computing a spectrogram thereof. A fingerprint, each having feature points, can be extracted from the spectrogram over a time window. The plurality of feature points is hashed to give a hash code. A sequence of hash codes obtained over multiple time windows is correlated with predetermined hash-code segments of known audio-meaningful events stored in a database. A matched audio-meaningful event having a highest correlation is identified. The scent-generating recipe corresponding to the matched audio-meaningful event is retrieved. Atomizers are used to vaporize scent-generating substances to generate the time-variant scent. Since the hash code has a fixed length and a smaller size than the plurality of feature points, storage requirements of the database and computation requirements of correlation calculation are reduced by using the hash code rather than the plurality of feature points.