Japanese Make the First TV You Can Lick. A Japanese professor has made a prototype of a TV screen that can imitate different flavours.
Not that anyone will stop you from licking your electrical appliances, but that doesn’t do you much at the moment. That would be different with Professor Homei Miyashita’s TTTV or ‘Taste the TV’.
The ding uses ten different cans of flavouring that are combined to mimic the taste of a specific food. The taster is then rolled on a hygienic film over the television screen so that you can try it.
All this should improve the experience of the program in question, although we have never felt the need to really taste things on television outside of, say, a baking program. In that sense, the technology is somewhat reminiscent of ‘smell TV’, the concept of spreading scents that match the atmosphere on television. The latter is already being used in certain cinemas but is not widely used.
Miyashita, a professor at Meiji University in Tokyo, hopes that his technology will give people an opportunity to interact with the world in times of lockdown. “The goal is to make it possible for people to experience something, like eating in a restaurant on the other side of the world, while staying at home,” he told Reuters news agency.
In addition to television, the research into synthesizing taste that Miyashita and his team are doing has other applications. For example, companies would be interested in spray spraying chocolate or pizza flavour on a piece of toast. Miyashita also hopes that flavours from all over the world can be digitally shared on a platform and downloaded by users, much like music or movies already are.
