Virtual Reality Takes a Sweet Turn: New Device Lets You Taste Cake, Study Reveals
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Novel technology intends to redefine the virtual reality experience by expanding to incorporate a new sensory connection: taste.
The interface, dubbed ‘e-Taste’, uses a combination of sensors and wireless chemical dispensers to facilitate the remote perception of taste – what scientists call gustation. These sensors are attuned to recognize molecules like glucose and glutamate — chemicals that represent the five basic tastes of sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Once captured via an electrical signal, that data is wirelessly passed to a remote device for replication.
The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
“The chemical dimension in the current VR and AR realm is relatively underrepresented, especially when we talk about olfaction and gustation,” said Jinghua Li, co-author of the study and an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State. “It’s a gap that needs to be filled and we’ve developed that with this next-generation system.
Despite the difficulty involved in replicating similar taste sensations for a majority of people, researchers found that in human trials, participants could distinguish between different sour intensities in the liquids generated by the system with an accuracy rate of about 70%.
While these results open up opportunities to pioneer new VR experiences, this team’s findings are especially significant because they could potentially provide scientists with a more intimate understanding of how the brain processes sensory signals from the mouth, said Li
lans to enhance the technology revolve around further miniaturizing the system and improving the system’s compatibility with different chemical compounds in food that produce taste sensations. Beyond helping to build a better and more dynamic gaming experience, the study notes that the work could be useful in promoting accessibility and inclusivity in virtual spaces for individuals with disabilities, like those with traumatic brain injuries or Long Covid, which brought gustatory loss to mainstream attention.
Ref: Shulin Chen et al. A sensor-actuator–coupled gustatory interface chemically connecting virtual and real environments for remote tasting.Sci. Adv.11,eadr4797(2025).DOI:10.1126/sciadv.adr4797
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