This Robot Chef Has An Electric Tongue To Taste Your Food

Creating robots that can taste food is not very straightforward, since taste involves many different factors. Most significantly is the fact that as we chew our food, taste changes. This is a process which researchers have not been able to replicate in a robot, until now. Cambridge researchers first created a robot that was trained to cook scrambled eggs with tomatoes, as reported by The Guardian. The robot also has a sensor, which allows it to taste the salt content of the dish, or salinity, as it cooks. This allows it to cook the eggs with the optimal salt levels.

After the dish was prepared, researchers blended it together in order to copy the process of food being chewed. Then, the robot was made to test the dish again to determine salinity levels after the food had been chewed. Apart from being able to tell if food is too salty, the robot can also determine if other ingredients are needed or how the dish should be cooked. It’s a huge step in the creation of robot chefs, and paves the way for a future where even more aspects of taste could be tested by robots, such as sweetness, sourness or oiliness (via The Guardian). This could allow robots to cook food tailored to individual tastes, creating the perfect dish based on specific taste indicators.