The Internet of Senses: A Position Paper on the Challenges and Opportunities of Multisensory Immersive Experiences for the Metaverse

The so-called metaverse will allow users to blend real and virtual worlds in a seamless manner, thus drastically changing how humans interact, socialize, and even work. While progress in extended reality headsets, wireless communications, blockchain technologies and quantum communications are paving the way for the metaverse, many of the emerging applications are still focusing on only two human senses: hearing and vision. In this position paper, we argue that in order to truly make immersive experiences, additional senses need to be stimulated. Moreover, affective computing and brain-computer interface principles need to be incorporated to make the interaction (be it human-human, human-avatar, avatar-avatar) more natural, and sustainable solutions need to be developed, so that we do not destroy our real world while trying to build a virtual version of it. This future internet has been termed "the Internet of Senses (IoS)". Here, we highlight some of the challenges in developing the IoS, as well as some of the opportunities that multisensory immersive experiences will bring to the manufacturing, retail, entertainment, and healthcare domains. We conclude with a brief description of a testbed under development in Canada to test emerging IoS and metaverse technologies and applications.