Virtual reality cake tasting with electronic tongue

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An e-Taste system has been developed by Yizhen Jia and his team at The Ohio State University. This electronic tongue can mimic flavors like cake and fish soup. However, it currently cannot reproduce other factors that affect taste, such as smell.

The e-Taste system uses chemicals representing the five basic tastes: salty, sour, sweet, bitter, and umami. By detecting these chemicals in food, converting them into digital readings, and then delivering flavor-containing hydrogels through a tube under the tongue, the system can partially recreate a food’s flavor in the mouth.

In tests, the device successfully reproduced single flavors and more complex tastes like lemonade, cake, fried egg, fish soup, and coffee. However, Alan Chalmers from the University of Warwick notes that taste is not solely determined by flavors but also by other senses like smell and sight. For example, a strawberry tastes sweet because of its aroma and color, even though it is sour.

While the e-Taste system can measure sweetness and sourness, it cannot replicate taste as perceived by the human tongue. This highlights the complexity of taste perception involving multiple senses.

Source: The Ohio State University & University of Warwick