A Japanese professor, helped by his students, has developed a technology to taste foods displayed on the screen. A tantalizing invention that is not really covid friendly.
Even without the Covid-19 pandemic, wouldn’t this Japanese invention be the worst in terms of technological advances? A Japanese professor has developed a prototype television screen that can be licked. It imitates the flavors of foods displayed on the screen.
If we understand the principle correctly, the device called Taste The TV (TTTV) uses 10 flavor cartridges that vaporize in combination to create the taste of a particular food. The flavor sample then slides on a plastic film placed on the screen and the viewer just has to slide his tongue there.
“The goal is to allow people to have the experience of something like eating in a restaurant halfway around the world, even while staying at home”, Homei Miyashita explained. But don’t expect to be able to taste and detect the variations in flavor of the desserts offered by your favorite Top Chef candidates. Tastes are, unless there is a technological feat that escapes us, standardized.
Miyashita, the Japanese engineer in charge of the project, also worked with a team of around 30 students on a variety of other flavor-related devices, including a fork that would make foods taste richer. TTTV could one day prove useful for distance cooking lessons, but its main use is likely to be leisure. We imagine for example a game allowing to taste a flavor on the screen and to guess its origin.
The device would cost around € 775 to manufacture.