03/09/2022

Do I Smell Coffee? The Best Paper Award for IFeL Researcher

In the article "Do I Smell Coffee? The Tale of a 360° Mulsemedia Experience," Dr. Ioan-Sorin Comsa works on multimedia network environments and stimulates the senses of touch and smell. The IEEE Computer Society, the leading organisation for computer professionals, has awarded the article with IEEE MultiMedia's 2020 Best Paper Award.

IEEE MultiMedia is a prestigious journal that features peer-reviewed articles on multimedia technology research and practice. The article «Do I Smell Coffee? The Tale of a 360° Mulsemedia Experience» with Dr Ioan-Sorin Comsa as first author was published in the January-March 2020 issue. The Data Scientist joined FFHS in November 2020 as a Research Associate with the Institute for Distance and eLearning Research (IFeL). He conducts research on adaptive learning, emotion recognition in learning, virtual reality, and machine learning. "We congratulate Ioan-Sorin Comsa on this great award and look forward to continuing research with him in this area," said Prof. Dr. Per Bergamin, head of IFeL.

Enhanced sensory perception with mulsemedia

In the article, Comsa et al. focused on multimedia network environments, so-called 360 mulsemedia - multiple sensorial media - which are characterized by additional sensory effects. Beyond sight and hearing, for example, the senses of touch and smell are stimulated. In the article, he presents the conceptual framework for delivering 360-mulsemedia content and a prototype based on 360-mulsemedia. In his study, which Ioan conducted with co-authors, he tested three types of mulsemedia content. These included three 360° panoramic videos enhanced with airflow (of varying intensity) and scent (diesel, coffee, and lavender) effects. Each 360 panoramic video was encoded in four different quality levels: HD, Full HD, 2.5K and 4K. Here, the evaluations from tests showed that higher video resolutions did not necessarily lead to a better quality of experience (QoE), which entails lower bandwidth costs. By the way, even lavender smells score higher than coffee beans, so you might as well postpone the purchase of a new coffee machine.

The detailed results of the study and the full article, «Do I Smell Coffee? The Tale of a 360° Mulsemedia Experience» can be downloaded here.