The Lickable Device Just Got An Upgrade To Become A Lickable Display

If licking a device to taste what’s on the display sounds gloss to you, then you better look away. Because the Taste The TV, or TTTV, has taken it to the next level. It now serves up the taste directly on the screen so that you lick the taste straight off the picture. Welcome to the future where a lickable display is a thing or is it?

TTTV is a “Taste Display” with a spray-mixing method that uses 10 flavor canisters to recreate the taste of a particular food. To create the flavor of a particular food, the machine mixes the select flavor canisters on a film that then slides out to the front of the actual display.

The project is developed by Meiji University associate professor Homei Miyashita who explains that food flavors can be broken down into 10 basic tastes such as salty, sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, and savory.

By mixing the select flavors and at the correct proportion it is possible to recreate the taste of a certain food.

The machine, which is an evolution of the device we saw last year, now has a neater setup that comes with an integrated mixing chamber and a screen. The machine is programmed to create the taste of 20 types of food samples.

But why such a machine? Well, according to Miyashita-san, he hopes that taste can become downloadable content like music and videos where people around the world can enjoy the flavors of the food from the restaurants they like remotely.

While taste display may be the first in the world, the other sense, smell, has already been covered. There was the now-defunct oPhone DUO that lets you send smell and then there was Olf-action SMELLIT, which appears to be defunct as well, that adds smell to movie experiences.

And let’s not forget that there was once an iPhone device that lets you smell the menu before ordering. That, btw, appears to be defunct too. Yikes. It looks like the prospect of senses outside of sight and sound is not too bright, does it?

Images: YouTube (明治大学宮下研究室).

via boing boing.