Made out of gold, platinum, and carbon electrodes, the electronic tongue was created and developed to ensure that the wine you'll be having with your delectable dinner meets the industrial scale and quality standards.
According to New Scientist, the electronic tongue was developed by a team led by Xavier Ceto at the University of South Australia. To date, it can accurately make a report on what the age of the wine is, where it came from and where did it mature, and the overall quality.
The electronic tongue came through a grueling process of translating different tastes into mathematical equations. Basically, the electronic tongue is able to determine all the things it needs to know by measuring electrochemical signals of the compounds, like sugar, found in wine. An advantage that the electronic tongue has over sommeliers is that fact that it doesn't experience tongue fatigue, which means that the device can accurately answer questions of quality no matter how many it has tasted.
"You can't have a person tasting 100 wines per day, so this sensor may be able to help screen them," said Ceto.
At this point, it's important to note that it couldn't have been possible without the sommeliers. In order to create a model that can rate the wine the way a sommelier would, the researches asked eight of them to describe wine. The researchers then took these ratings and calibrated them to the electronic tongue which will allow it to predict the sommelier's taste perception. This particular ability is what sets it apart from the other electronic tongues elsewhere.
Though it seems to be accurate enough, Heather Smyth at the University of Queensland, Australia thinks that it would still be impossible to perfectly mimic what the sommeliers perceived.
"Emotion, psychology, past memories and experiences all influence these perceptions and contribute to our perception of flavor - no instrument can possibly replace that," said Smyth.
