Demonstration of a Lollipop user interface that simulates taste in virtual reality and augmented reality environments. Credit: Lu et al, 2024/PNAS
Virtual reality (VR) technology has long sought to incorporate human senses into virtual and mixed reality environments. In addition to sight and hearing, researchers have attempted to add the human sense of touch, smell, and even taste through various user interfaces. However, the latter turned out to be very difficult. According to sources, a team of scientists in Hong Kong has developed a handheld user interface shaped like a lollipop that can reproduce several different flavors in a virtual environment. new paper Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
It is well established that the human taste sensation consists of sweet, salty, sour, bitter, and umami. These five basic tastes are caused by chemical stimulation of the tongue and, to a lesser extent, the pharynx, larynx, and epiglottis. To recreate these sensations in VR, several attempts at flavor user interfaces have been made that rely on mechanisms such as chemical stimulation, thermal stimulation, electrical stimulation, and iontophoresis.
Chemical approaches typically involve applying flavoring chemicals directly to the tongue, but this requires space to store large amounts of said chemicals, which is not ideal for VR applications. There will be a long delay time. Temperature changes applied directly to the tongue stimulate the taste buds, but require complex systems that incorporate components such as cooling subsystems and temperature sensors.
The most popular method is electrical stimulation. The method simulates five basic tastes by varying the frequency, strength, and direction of electrical signals on the tongue. However, this method requires affixing an electrode patch on or near the tongue, which is cumbersome and tends to lead to unbalanced taste sensations.
So Yiming Liu of the City University of Hong Kong and his co-authors use iontophoresis to deliver stable taste feedback by using ions flowing through a biologically safe hydrogel to transport flavor chemicals. I chose to use the . This method is safe, consumes less power, allows accurate taste feedback, and provides a more natural human-machine interface. Liu et al. The company has improved upon recent advances in this field by developing a portable lollipop-shaped user interface device. This also improved flavor quality and consistency.
