posted on Aug, 9 2003 @ 02:32 AM
Virtual reality conquers sense of taste
14:49 31 July 03
Food companies cooking up a novel product will soon be able to check how elderly people will fare when they try to chew on it, thanks to a device that
mimics the taste and "mouthfeel" of food.
Already, virtual reality devices have been built that try to simulate experiences for four of our five senses - vision, hearing, touch and smell. But
the complexity of the sense of taste has made it difficult for computers to conquer.
Taste combines the feel of food in the mouth with chemical and even auditory cues. Hiroo Iwata of the University of Tsukuba in Japan and colleagues
call it the "last frontier of virtual reality".
But it is a frontier they have now crossed. "The food simulator is the first media technology that is put into the mouth," says Iwata.