Tasting robot with an optical tongue: Real time examining and advice giving on food and drink

Abstract

This paper describes the tasting robot with an artificial sense of taste. Its optical tongue examines the taste of food and drink within several seconds and gives the name as well as its ingredients without crashing them and without opening paper or plastic packages. It is the integration of infrared (IR) spectroscopic technologies with pattern recognition technologies. The robot is the world's first tasting robot which gives advices on the food and on health issues based on the information gathered. It sees if foods are best to eat or if they are good for health from the point of the content of sugar and fat. The robot was first exhibited in EXPO 2005 AICHI, Japan. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.