Virtual reality gets a taste – scientists create an “electronic language”

Someday it will be possible to fully immerse yourself in virtual reality with touch, taste and smell. Modern technologies are only taking their first steps in this direction, testing one or another technology separately. A new development is an electronic “language” with which anyone can try dishes and sweets on the Internet.

Image source: Shulin Chen

The gadget, called e-Taste, was created at Ohio State University. The electronic tongue is a set of hydrogels with fillers that are programmed to be delivered through a tube under the user’s tongue. Chemicals corresponding to five basic tastes are used for this: sodium chloride for salty, citric acid for sour, glucose for sweet, magnesium chloride for bitter, and glutamate for umami. “These five tastes already make up a very large spectrum of products that we eat every day,” the scientists say.

The taste coding system uses sensors to detect the levels of these chemicals in food, converts them into digital data, and then sends those values ​​to a pump that injects small amounts of different flavored hydrogels through a small tube under a person’s tongue.

During the tests, people’s ability to distinguish basic tastes, such as sour, was first tested. Of the 10 subjects, 7 people rated the sourness of the tested product equally.

The team then tested whether the system could reproduce more complex tastes – lemonade, cake, fried egg, fish soup and coffee – by testing and interviewing six people. It turned out that the subjects were able to do this in more than 80% of cases.

The result was encouraging, although skeptics rightly point out that the taste of food is strongly influenced by its aroma and appearance. The expression “looks delicious” confirms these remarks. Taste alone is not enough to correctly assess the taste of food. All this will work well only in combination, when its aroma and appearance are transmitted along with the taste.