Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloong Tong, Hong Kong.
Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Systems, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2024 Dec 3;121(49):e2412116121. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2412116121. Epub 2024 Nov 25.
Gustation is one of the five innate sensations for humans, distinguishing from vision, auditory, tactile, and olfaction, as which is a close and chemically induced sense. Despite the fact that a handful of gustation display technologies have been developed, the new technologies still pose significant challenges in miniaturization of the overall size for portability, enriching taste options within a limited working area, supporting natural human-device interaction, and achieving precisely controlled taste feedback. To address these issues, here, we report a set of intelligent and portable lollipop-shaped taste interfacing systems covering from 2 to 9 different taste options for establishing an adjustable taste platform in virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) environments. Tasteful and food-grade chemicals embedded agarose hydrogels serve as taste sources based on iontophoresis operation principle, with an adjustable feedback intensity and independent operation time by tuning the voltage input. To achieve portability and user-friendly operation, the devices are miniaturized into a gustation interface with 9-channel taste generators in the dimension of 8 cm × 3 cm × 1 cm. To realize both gustation and olfaction feedbacks in Metaverse, an olfaction interface based on 7-channel odor generators is also introduced into the gustation interface system. As a result, the demonstrations of our gustation interface systems in intelligent medical gustation assessment, remote shopping, and mixed reality have proven their advances and great progress in various potential application areas, ranging from human-machine interfaces, to biomedical science, and to entertainment.
味觉是人类五种先天感觉之一，与视觉、听觉、触觉和嗅觉不同，味觉是一种密切的、化学诱导的感觉。尽管已经开发出了一些味觉显示技术，但新技术在便携性方面仍然面临着整体尺寸小型化、在有限工作空间内丰富味觉选择、支持自然的人机交互以及实现精确控制味觉反馈等重大挑战。为了解决这些问题，我们在这里报告了一系列智能且便携的棒棒糖形状味觉接口系统，涵盖了 2 到 9 种不同的味觉选择，用于在虚拟现实 (VR)、增强现实 (AR) 和混合现实 (MR) 环境中建立可调节的味觉平台。基于电渗流操作原理，味觉接口系统使用嵌入了美味和食品级化学物质的琼脂糖水凝胶作为味觉源，通过调整电压输入，可以实现可调的反馈强度和独立的操作时间。为了实现便携性和用户友好操作，设备被小型化为一个味觉接口，其中包含 9 个通道的味觉发生器，尺寸为 8 cm × 3 cm × 1 cm。为了在元宇宙中实现味觉和嗅觉反馈，还在味觉接口系统中引入了基于 7 个通道气味发生器的嗅觉接口。结果表明，我们的味觉接口系统在智能医学味觉评估、远程购物和混合现实中的演示证明了它们在各种潜在应用领域的先进性和巨大进展，涵盖了人机界面、生物医学科学和娱乐等领域。
