A team of Hong Kong scientists has developed a candy-shaped device that can recreate several different tastes in a virtual environment. Sweet, salty, and sour are available, as well as cherry, passion fruit, green tea, milk, durian, and grapefruit.
The scientists based their work on iontophoresis, which allows you to recreate flavors using ions flowing through BIO-safe hydrogels. There are 9 channels inside the device, each of which contains a flavored hydrogel, which creates a given taste. The gels are made of agarose with the addition of mineral water and essences: citric acid, sugar, salt, milk, passion fruit, green tea, cherry, grapefruit and even durian. The gadget is battery-powered, and the design also includes a microcontroller, a Bluetooth module, and a user interface. The dimensions of the device are very compact – 8 x 3 x 1 cm, and the weight is only 15 grams.
The authors plan to improve their development, focusing primarily on expanding the time range of use of the “lollipop” (currently it is limited to about an hour, since hydrogels saturated with additives dry out and lose their taste).
