Professor Yoshiaki Miyashita of the Department of Advanced Media Science, Faculty of Comprehensive Mathematics, Meiji University has developed a display that can express any taste.Since only taste information is transmitted without moving people or food and drink, future applications such as sharing taste without risk of infection are expected.
This taste display touches the tongue with five gels that are hardened by dissolving electrolytes that make you feel the basic five tastes (sweetness, acidity, saltiness, bitterness, umami).By applying electricity to these, the ions inside the gel can be migrated, the amount of each ion touching the tongue can be controlled, and the ratio of the basic five tastes felt by the tongue can be freely adjusted.
Miyashita Laboratory has been promoting research on "electric taste" that produces taste by electrically stimulating the tongue.Until now, as a project to change a healthy diet into a satisfying taste without chemical substances, we have developed "gum that generates electricity by chewing power to create taste" and "a method to strongly lengthen the aftertaste of drinks by electrical stimulation". There is.This taste display was developed with the aim of transmitting and reproducing the taste to remote areas without using electrical stimulation to the tongue.
A paper on the prototype of the prototype taste display "Norimaki Synthesizer" has been published, but Professor Miyashita continues to research methods to improve the reproducibility of taste and improve the expressiveness, even more than the findings described in the paper. ing.
Paper information:[Norimaki Synthesizer] Norimaki Synthesizer: Taste Display Using Ion Electrophoresis in Five Gels
