Tongue mounted interface for digitally actuating the sense of taste

Abstract

Most of the systems for generating taste sensations are based on blending different chemicals appropriately, and there are less proven approaches to stimulate the sense of taste digitally. In this paper, a method to digitally stimulate the sense of taste is introduced and demonstrated based on electrical and thermal stimulation on human tongue. Thus, two digital control systems are presented to control taste sensations and their intensities effectively on the tongue. The effects of most persuading factors such as current, frequency, and temperature have been accounted to noninvasively stimulate the tongue. The initial experimental results indicate that sour (strong), bitter (mild), and salty(mild) are the main sensations, which can be evoked while there are evidences of sweet sensation too. Based on the results of the Tongue Mounted Digital Taste Interface, we have then developed another system which named as the Digital Sour Lollipop to effectively control the sour taste digitally. Initial experimental results of this system show the controllability of sour taste up to three levels of intensities using the electrical stimulation on human tongue. © 2012 IEEE.