Electronic tongue replicates everything except spicy stuff—so far
Ohio State University researchers have invented what might prove to be an innovative approach to granting virtual reality users a method for seeing, hearing, and tasting.
The only downside is that the team has yet to figure out how to deliver hot, spicy, and fatty flavors.
Still, if developed further, the technology may be the gold at the end of the immersive entertainment rainbow—and a crucial step towards fully duplicating a huge variety of real-life sensations in artificial, digital environments. It would also give people the ability to savor a banquet of what’d otherwise be unavailable or flat-out impossible meals.
Raspberry berets
According to Shulin Chen of Ohio State University’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering, as published in ScienceAdvances, the technology begins with what could best be described as an electronic tongue capable of breaking down and subsequently analyzing information about how much or how little of five specific flavors it detects.
As anyone who knows anything about cooking, or dining for that matter, those five are glucose for sweetness, sodium chloride for salty, glutamate which mirrors umani, magnesium chloride for bitterness, and citric acid for sour.
Once compiled, the data is transmitted to the second component, which supplies matching flavors to a recipient’s mouth.
A plus is that the system may prove to be an invaluable research tool by stimulating not just the whole tongue but also specific taste buds.
Banana pancakes
The Guardian quoted Marianna Obrist, a University College London professor of multisensory interfaces, as saying of Ohio State University’s work, “Taste stimulation is a particularly challenging area, yet the authors seem to present a compelling integration of taste sensations to enrich digital experiences.”
In their original paper, the researchers suggest their technology might be helpful—or merely entertaining—in a host of different ways, “Potential applications include immersive gaming, online shopping, remote education, weight management, sensory testing, physical rehabilitation, and others.”
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As mentioned previously, the only current issue is finding a means to reproduce spicy and fatty flavors accurately. Not to chastise the obviously creative inventiveness that went into this technology, but we can’t help but wonder why they didn’t simply add a little tabasco to their five-flavor recipe.
The researcher’s approach of first breaking down and then synthesizing how various foods taste appears to bypass what’s apparently limited previous attempts; that is, rather than attempting to copy the memory of how something tastes, Ohio State University researchers instead know down to the smallest percentages of sour, sweet, savory, umami, and salty.
American Pie
Aside from making VR seem less virtual and more real, along with the team’s already creative suggestions, their technology could also be used to concoct a whole new world of sexually-stimulating flavors, perhaps even ones meticulously crafted to produce anything from wild arousal to boosting our other senses to otherwise undreamt of levels of excitement.
Putting a new twist on what the team already envisioned, virtual adult games might undergo a sensory renaissance, especially if you couple taste with haptic tech.
We must not forget how closely linked smell is to taste. Something similar may also be right around the corner, especially when you consider how technologically similar it might be to what the Ohio State University researchers have already developed.
Peaches and cream
Along with failing to copy spicy and fatty flavors, the only other limitation this tech may face is comfort. After all, few, if any, people may be willing to have a cumbersome apparatus stuck in their mouth—even if they can gorge on a limitless, albeit digitally simulated, smorgasbord.
Even if it were somehow reduced in size, its use of physical substances may also hinder its appeal.
However, the Ohio State University technology may prove to be an important stage in producing truly immersive virtual experiences by bypassing clunky hardware in favor of direct neural stimulation.
In the meantime, if progressively refined, this technology may eventually be a standard feature, or at least a fascinating optional feature, of tomorrow’s next-next-next-generation virtual reality entertainment systems—and what a tasty world that will surely be!
Image Sources: Depositphotos
