Imagine chatting videos with a distant friend who is having lunch and your friend’s sandwich seems delicious. What if I could ask your friend to immerse a sensor in the meal and give you a taste?
Remote snacks approached virtual reality a little. On Friday in a newspaper in the magazine Science Advances, Yizhen Jia, a student graduated in Materials Engineering from Ohio State University, his councilor Jinghua Li and their colleagues reported having helped the flavors to the volunteers intended to represent coffee, lemonade, fried eggs, cake and fish soup.
In an interview, Mr. Jia discussed a photo of hers who modeled a version of a device built by him and his colleagues, which is based on micro -phlofluidic. Folded by its lip are the ones that look like five or six sauce packages that you would add to the instantaneous ramen. The packages feed on a small tube slipped into his mouth. When miniature pumps in the packages receive a signal from a sensor immersed in a distant fluid, they put themselves at work. In this case, the researchers’ goal was to carefully transmit the taste of a glass of lemonade.
In a more complex version of the configuration, the packages containing a variety of substances such as salted water, citric acid and glucose are arranged in a semicircle on a table, allowing a person at the end of the tube to receive other tastes.
Why, could you ask, would you like to taste someone else’s fish soup? Jia underlines that it is a commonplace to be able to see and hear what is going on far away. Why not be able to taste it? Or maybe you would like to taste the recipes in a cookbook before working to make them. Perhaps one day there may be a button on online food shopping services so that you can taste it practically testing different hot sauces before buying them.
At this moment, these scenarios may seem a little extravagant and the device, to put it slightly, a little cumbersome. The researchers behind the new document, however, are not the only ones to work on devices that could allow us to taste and smell things that are not in our immediate vicinity.
“There are people who try to do it with direct electrical stimulation on the language,” said Jia. “There are people who try to use other ways to provide chemicals. We are using a water pump. “
In this document, the team’s pump sent various concentrations of lemonade aroma to volunteers. They showed that the study participants could reliably evaluate the samples for acidity. Whether the researchers immersed a sensor in lemonade to generate the flavor or simply used a recipe for mixing chemicals transmitted by the pump, the effects were similar.
When the volunteers were sent the flavors of coffee, fried eggs, cake, lemonade and fish soup generated through chemical recipes, they were able to correctly identify which of the five tastes had been nourished for the most of the time. With a wider variety of chemicals and more recipes, more foods could be simulated, researchers suggest.
It is more complicated than it seems, however: not all tastes are equally easy to simulate. When you work with small quantities of fluid, it can be difficult to nail the concentrations of taste molecules so that a subject has an experience similar to real thing. The smell and consistency of food and drinks also intertwine with the experience of taste. Think of the aroma of coffee and the way the liquid feels more and more often than the water.
“Everything has to join you to say:” This is a good coffee, “said Jia.” A drop of chemicals on the tongue will feel different. “
The team is now studying if weak vibrations on the language could be able to help simulate the consistency of food. They are also curious if perfumes can be used to help complete the sensory image. And they think they are able to ensure that miniature pumps are a little more miniature.
Ideally, you shouldn’t pay up for this device from your lip. One day, perhaps, the whole matter could be delicate enough: a medallion or pendant, transmitting flavors from afar.