Towards A Reference Ontology On Mulsemedia Systems

The use of multiple senses in interactive applications has become increasingly feasible due to the upsurge of commercial, off-the-shelf devices to produce sensory effects. Creating Multiple Sensorial Media (MulSeMedia) immersive systems requires understanding their digital ecosystem. Mulsemedia systems encompass a set of applications, and devices of different types assembled to communicate or express feelings from the virtual world to the real world. Despite existing standards, tools, and recent research devoted to them, there is still a lack of formal and explicit representation of what mulse-media is. Misconceptions could eventually lead to the construction of solutions that might not take into account reuse, integration, standardization, among other design features. In this paper, we propose to establish a common conceptualization about mulsemedia systems through a reference ontology, named MulseOnto, covering their main notions. To evaluate it, we applied ontology verification and validation techniques, including assessment by humans and a data-driven approach. The results showed that MulseOnto can be used as a consensual conceptual model for exploring the knowledge about the whole chain of mulsemedia systems.