Novel tech can allow people to taste coffee in virtual reality

Scientists have devised a novel technology, which intends to redefine the virtual reality experience by expanding to incorporate a new sensory connection -- taste.

The interface, dubbed ‘e-Taste’, uses a combination of sensors and wireless chemical dispensers to facilitate the remote perception of taste – what scientists call gustation.

These sensors are attuned to recognise molecules like glucose and glutamate — chemicals that represent the five basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami.

Once captured via an electrical signal, that data is wirelessly passed to a remote device for replication, according to researchers from Ohio State University in the US.

“The chemical dimension in the current VR and AR realm is relatively underrepresented, especially when we talk about olfaction and gustation,” said Jinghua Li, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State.

“It’s a gap that needs to be filled and we’ve developed that with this next-generation system,” Li added.

The system, whose development was inspired by previous biosensor work of Li’s, utilises an actuator with two parts: an interface to the mouth and a small electromagnetic pump.

This pump connects to a liquid channel of chemicals that vibrates when an electric charge passes through it, pushing the solution through a special gel layer into the mouth of the subject.

Depending on the length of time that the solution interacts with this gel layer, the intensity and strength of any given taste can easily be adjusted, said Li.

“Based on the digital instruction, you can also choose to release one or several different tastes simultaneously so that they can form different sensations,” she said. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

Further tests assessing e-Taste’s ability to immerse players in a virtual food experience also analysed its long-range capabilities, showing that remote tasting could be initiated in Ohio from as far away as California.

Another experiment involved subjects trying to identify five food options they perceived, whether it was lemonade, cake, fried egg, fish soup or coffee.

“While these results open up opportunities to pioneer new VR experiences, this team’s findings are especially significant because they could potentially provide scientists with a more intimate understanding of how the brain processes sensory signals from the mouth,” said Li.