Brief Summary
This video explores "mocktail," a device that digitally augments flavor by adding different smells, tastes, and visuals to change the flavor profile of a drink. The device uses LED lights for visual cues, micro air pumps to deliver scents, and electrodes to provide micro-ampere currents that alter taste perceptions. It can create familiar flavors from simple ingredients or combine unusual tastes for complex experiences. The technology has potential applications in bars for on-the-fly drink customization and in health for low-sodium diets, where it can replace the missing flavor of salt with digital taste sensations and smells.
- The "mocktail" device enhances the flavor of drinks using digital augmentation.
- It combines visual, olfactory, and gustatory stimuli to alter flavor perception.
- Potential applications include customized bar experiences and health-focused flavor enhancement.
The "mocktail" is a device designed to digitally augment flavor. It works by adding different smells, taste sensations, and visuals to completely change the flavor profile of a base liquid like sage in soda water. The goal is to provide a customizable and enhanced sensory experience when consuming beverages.
The device consists of three main components. First, an LED light at the top provides visual cues, influencing the user's preconception of the flavor. Second, three micro air pumps in the base push scented smells through the device to a top vent, delivering different flavor profiles to the user's nose. Third, a digital taste interface with two electrodes on the front provides a micro-ampere current that runs through the user's taste buds, altering their perception of taste.
The device can create a range of flavor experiences. It can transform soda water into something similar to lemonade by adding a lemonade smell, a yellow color, and a sour taste. Alternatively, it can create complex and unusual cocktail combinations, such as gin with orange, sand pepper, and ginger, to produce strong and layered tastes.
One user noted that knowing the drink was just water made the experience feel somewhat artificial. However, they believed that someone unaware of this might not realize they were only drinking water. The smell significantly influenced the perceived taste, with the user particularly noticing a strong coriander flavor, highlighting the psychological impact of the device.
The device has several potential applications. In a bar setting, it could change the taste of a drink on the fly, allowing customers to customize their beverages or sample different menu items before ordering. For health applications, it could be used in low-sodium diets to replace the missing flavor of salt with digital taste sensations and smells, enhancing the palatability of food and drinks.
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Transcript
Full transcript of “Students create virtual cocktail device that mimics tastes and flavours”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 [Music] so he thought eating [Music]
0:54 so this is mocktail and the idea is that we're digitally augmenting flavour we're adding different smells different taste sensations and different visuals to completely change the flavor profile of sage in soda water whatever we want to use yeah but they don't yeah it's quite interesting how quickly you can change so you should you should start getting a difference [Music]
1:42 firstly we start off for the LED light which is at the top and this basically provides the visuals for the actual color of the drink and provides users with that kind of preconception of what the flavor might be inside secondly from the base of the device we have three micro air pumps which push scented smells all the way through the device up to the top vent here which pushes sense to the nose of the user so we can provide them with different flavor profiles purely based on the smells and thirdly we also have the digital taste interface which is these two electrodes on the front and basically they are providing the micro ampere current which is running through the users tastebuds and this is how we kind of change users perceptions of the taste when they're drinking
2:31 okay we can do something as simple as taking soda water and putting like a lemonade smell a yellow color and the sour taste to it making it more similar to traditional lemonade but we can go completely off the wall and say we want some weird combination of cocktail like you put some gin with overlay orange sand pepper some ginger some really strong tastes in a making much more complex
3:22 because I knew what was happening it was probably a bit fake but I feel like if you went in there not knowing that it was just water that you were drinking people probably wouldn't realize much it did taste like something I would drink especially the smell but that again was psychological and I was very focused on the small therefore I could smell it a bit more one of the experiences was having a lot of coriander in your drink and that was a very prominent thing for me like I could taste it I could smell it again psychological but very interesting
4:08 a bit or new yeah what were you thinking hungry inspire yeah I would certainly be interesting but I think ultimately people just want to get drunk so it adds to an interesting experience yeah in the setting of a bar let's cook of course like changing the way you actually taste your drink on the fly so if you're not happy with your drink you
4:54 can just change it maybe you can sample different items from a menu before you even buy them and with regards to also health applications as well so you have to have a mo sodium diet rather than having the salt in the drink or food that you're tasting you can take that out and because you're now missing a flavor so you need to cover it with something so we can cover it with the digital taste sensations and the actual smells [Music]
