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Face Electrodes Let You Taste and Chew In Virtual Reality (newscientist.com)
walterbyrd quotes a report from New Scientist: Experiments with "virtual food" use electronics to emulate the taste and feel of the real thing, even when there's nothing in your mouth. This tech could add new sensory inputs to virtual reality or augment real-world dining experiences, especially for people with restricted diets or health issues that affect their ability to eat. Several projects have succeeded in tricking us into tasting things that aren't there. Nimesha Ranasinghe at the National University of Singapore has already experimented with a "digital lollipop" to emulate different tastes, and a spoon embedded with electrodes that amplify the salty, sour, or bitter flavor of the real food eaten off it. However, his experiments with electrical stimulation had less success simulating sweetness compared to the other tastes. But digitizing this taste could be particularly useful in, for example, helping people cut back on sugary food or drinks. So Ranasinghe and his colleague Ellen Yi-Luen Do started experimenting with thermal stimulation instead. Their new project, presented at the 2016 ACM User Interface Software and Technology Symposium (UIST) in Tokyo, uses changes in temperature to mimic the sensation of sweetness on the tongue. The user places the tip of their tongue on a square of thermoelectric elements that are rapidly heated or cooled, hijacking thermally sensitive neurons that normally contribute to the sensory code for taste. In an initial trial, it worked for about half of participants. Some also reported a sensation of spiciness when the device was warmer (around 35 degrees Celsius) and a minty taste when it was cooler (18 degrees Celsius). Ranasinghe and Do envisage such a system embedded in a glass or mug to make low-sugar drinks taste sweeter.
Can't take any news seriously anymore. It's all BS and lies. This shit probably works just as well as top-of-the-line "AI" does today: not at all. Boring. Shitty. Stupid. Zzz.
Diabetes can be caused by consuming too much sugar, but if you cut back on the amount but still preserve the same taste, you start treading down the very dangerous path of insulin resistance as well. Your body will stop making the proper amount of insulin for what it detects in taste because it's used to lack of sugar, and you'll wind up with diabetes all the same - it's only an effective way to allow somebody whose body already doesn't produce or absorb the proper amount of insulin to satisfy a sugar craving. However, this does have some great potential for MMO games and cooking websites and the like - while taste is arguably our least useful sense in such an environment, such a sensor might find a place for allowing people to preview recipes before they cook them or such.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
If I only had this to hack as a teenager to make my friends taste shit....
Let's use it to stimulate more dopamine production, and put an end to the drug market.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
But you are still hungry.
The first thing I thought of was simulating the various tastes the pr0n VR market might use.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Most wines have a recommended serving temperature and some have to be served in chilled glasses. Its known that the temperature of the liquid will change the taste. Why else is Soda served chilled if not to make it sweeter.
As a diabetic I would love to be able to drink sweet stuff without worrying about sugar so I am looking forward to this mug hitting the market. In the meantime I will add ice.
**Life is too short to be serious**
Everything tastes like chicken.
Because there's a glitch in the matrix.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yelp reviewers would then have to opine on how closely the real experience matched the virtual try-me's on the establishment's website.
"I woke up and my pillow was gone"
I think it's actually a good idea to venture down this road, but we need to be careful not to create dangerous situations (eg "eating fire/acid") that would normally be deadly in reality because it may induce people to try it in reality. Or worse, people might think they are still in the game (eg GTA-like games) or develop a motion-memory about it.
For the most part I believe that VR is just going to be an utter fail, but the ability to trigger taste/touch/smell would go a long way into improving VR. Right now the inability to feel anything is the first reason why VR isn't really usable, controllers are not a viable input device. It would be possible to induce a heart attack in someone with VR visuals or touch senses (eg cutting someones arm off with a hack saw) because the body believes it's happening when it's not if we venture down this road without safety.
VR already makes people sick, even if it's not "supposed to", because not everyone is tuned the same way. I'm sure there will be more than a few people who have a barely high end enough VR system who get so sick from it that they will never try it again.
I'm going to take photos of people while wearing all of this VR gear with big stupid goggles on and a cock^W"lollipop" in their mouths and then show them after the fact what bloody morons they look like.
Here is a hint people, go outside and experience non-virtual reality, it's like..a bazillion pixels and the food even tastes the right way!
One electrode is placed in your mouth, and the other in your butthole.
Oh. Oops. That one goes in your mouth. Sorry, scrote.
Alas! Earwax!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
to taste sum pussy
I know the best way to get the sensations of a good meal. Sit down and eat a good meal.
How much money can Silicon Valley waster developing things no one wants?
If you want to simulate sweetness, just use miracle fruit (Synsepalum dulcificum).
a tech giant is trying to ram down my throat with Courage.
...assuming u r a guy;-) what u r talking about is pheromones, long debated about...what i find interesting r the experiments that show women r attracted to men who smell _UN_like their fathers, thought to promote genetic diversity, particularly in the immune system http://abcnews.go.com/Health/s... ...unfortunately, women on birthcontrol _don't_display this preference, which may explain the increase in allergies...score 1 4 the pope;-}
...assuming u r a guy;-)
Yup.
what u r talking about is pheromones, long debated about...what i find interesting r the experiments that show women r attracted to men who smell _UN_like their fathers, thought to promote genetic diversity, particularly in the immune system
Plausible. I do know that I have met some very physically attractive women who I never had an erotic thought about. Others? Yeah, much so.
I've hear women talking about "Ugly Hunks" as well, so I could very much thing something is going on with pheromones/smell.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.