The technology of the senses
Feel The Technology is an immersive and gamified experience that showcases services based on disruptive technologies such as virtual reality, the metaverso, or artificial intelligence in different spaces. The Feel The Technology campaign aims to humanize people’s perception of technology by allowing users to use their five senses to explore it.
To this end, an immersive experience has been created, centering around a sensory journey through Barcelona, blending the physical and virtual worlds, so that visitors of the MWC23 can not only have a unique user experience but can also reflect on the impact of technology on how we communicate, interact, and perceive reality.
Every part of the experience will focus on an activity in which one of the senses will predominate, so in taste we will find a chocolate tasting, or in smell an AI will indicate to us what range of smells we like the most.
The technology used in Feel the Technology is already a tangible reality with an overwhelming potential. The future of the metaverse (integrated with other technologies such as AI, 5G, etc.) offers a plethora of possibilities in fields such as medicine, education or leisure.
Discover it in the Mobile World Capital Barcelona spaces of MWC23 and 4YFN and at Beat Barcelona.
The beginning: generation of your avatar
The visitor will automatically generate their own photorealistic avatar using facial recognition techniques that allow them to copy the user’s features. The avatar creation process will be carried out on 2 totems and the digital identity will be sent to the user by email, and will automatically jump to the olfactory and gustatory experience.
After selecting their avatar, the visitor will enter MWCapital’s Metaverse’s 'Area of Smell’ to begin their first sensory experience: smell. The avatar will travel to 6 iconic locations of Barcelona (Park Güell, Santa Maria del Mar, Las Ramblas, Petritxol Street, Barceloneta and Camp Nou), each associated with a scent created by a master perfumer from Puig. A physical device with a screen will be linked to the metaverse, releasing the smell when the avatar reaches each of the Barcelona landmarks.
According to the visitors’ preferences regarding the scents, the system will use artificial intelligence to create the visitor’s olfactory profile, which will be stored in their digital identification. Additionally, from the olfactory profile, the system will suggest a taste for the visitor’s next stage of the journey: taste.
The visitor will move to the Taste Station, where after selecting their avatar, they will enjoy a gastronomic experience through the phases of tasting chocolate. The user will receive a chocolate truffle specially created by Germans Roca according to their olfactory profile created in the 'smell experience’. These are three creations based on three different tastes: acid, sweet and spicy.
Then, the visitor will start a digital journey, a mixture of AR and VR with Quest PRO virtual reality glasses, related to the tasting of chocolate, guided by the master chocolatier from Celler Can Roca. This journey will be a personalized experience, as it will vary according to the user’s choice of flavor.
The user will proceed to the touch station where they will be able to recreate a very important moment in Barcelona’s history: the ignition of the Olympic cauldron in Barcelona 92. Thanks to haptic sleeves and virtual reality glasses, the user will be able to experience archery, perceiving each sensation, from the weight of the bow to the tension when drawing the string, adding immersion to the virtual environment.
The visitor will enjoy a virtual reality experience through virtual reality glasses where they will develop an application to simulate fireworks by coding a sequence of simple commands. Once they have achieved simulating the coding in this digital environment, with the support of a virtual expert, the fireworks will begin.
The user will enjoy an immersive musical experience. They make this happen by recreating IZAL’s last indie-pop concert at the Palau Sant Jordi, allowing the visitor to experience it from the stage in a 360º immersive experience with VR glasses.
To enrich the experience and make the concert come alive in five dimensions, additional elements have been added to make the user experience it through all senses, generating a unique and realistic context, which will make them feel as if they are the artist on stage for a moment.
Innovative business ecosystem
Barcelona has all the necessary elements to become the reference hub for 5G in Southern Europe. In addition to being the host of the Mobile World Congress, the global capital of mobile with the support of GSMA, it is the 5th leading city for startups in Europe according to the consultancy StartupBlink, behind Paris, Berlin, Stockholm and Amsterdam.
Moreover, Barcelona is consolidating itself as a leading city in technology since it has companies capable of generating a sophisticated demand for 5G services and applications, and it has a high capacity to attract large corporations to install their innovation units.
In this sense, according to ACCIÓ data, in 2021 Catalonia had 1,900 emerging companies, an 11.4% more than in 2020 and a 26.4% more than in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. Catalan emerging companies employ 19,300 people, and 26% of their human teams, a percentage which is 17% in the case of their founders. 47% of the startups in Catalonia work with technologies linked to deep tech, that is, those based on a scientific discovery or an engineering innovation.
