Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign have successfully developed a sensor that identifies sweetness with a 100 percent accuracy. Sweetness is one of the five basic tastes that a human tongue can identify and the development of this sensor is another step towards the development of a fully humanoid robot.
Sweetness Patterns as explained by the Scientists
The sensor is the size of a business card and can measure sweetness in both solids and liquids. The accuracy is far higher than a human tongue and the sensor was able to identify 14 different natural and artificial sweeteners, including sucrose, xylitol, sorbitol, aspartame, and saccharin with 100 percent accuracy in 80 different trials.
The main application is in food quality control where high-pressure liquid chromatography takes considerably longer than this new sensor to give the results. It gives the results in 2 minutes as compared to 30 minutes for the chromatography and added with the fact that it is small, cheap and disposable it can return results in nearly real time.
Their findings were presented at the American Chemical Society’s 238th National Meeting. Let’s wait for the research group to come with sensors for the remaining tastes; sour, bitter, salty and umami.
Link to : Research Group responsible for creating this sensor
