e-Taste - A New Experience of Flavors Through Virtual Reality

e-Taste is a new, exciting invention that uses sensors and wireless chemical dispensers to enable remote perception or gestation. Through this, “e-Taste” can wirelessly transmit the flavors of foodstuffs to a user’s tongue.

“This is a step towards the next generation of human-machine interfaces and virtual reality,” says materials engineer Yizhen Jia of Ohio State University.

The system uses five edible chemicals to simulate the different flavors of food. These chemicals include glucose for sweetness, citric acid for sour sensations, magnesium chloride for bitterness and glutamate for savory/umami flavors.

The chemicals are then infused into gels in the device, which are mixed into small channels and pumped onto a user’s tongue through an electromagnetic pump.

To evaluate the capabilities of the device, e-Taste researchers had 10 participants distinguish between 5 intensities of sourness produced by this device. This was evaluated through the creation of five foodstuffs, including lemonade, cake, fried egg, fish soup, and coffee. This experiment ended with promising results of nearly 87% accuracy. However, this test also illustrates that some tastes were easier to identify than others, such as lemonade and cake, in contrast to the flavors of fried egg.

In the future, researchers for this device are working to implement olfactory, or smell sensations into the device as well, hoping to enhance the immersive abilities s of food through this device.