Man-made devices that can sense the taste of food and drink have been notoriously difficult to develop, despite their obvious applications in the food industry. To tackle this problem Akira Tanaguchi at Anritsu Corporation, together with researchers at Kyusyu University in Japan, have been developing a novel taste-sensing system that mimics the way that people and animals taste food. It is primarily designed to detect the taste of drinks such as beer, tea and coffee, and is able to discriminate between different brands of a particular product.
The full article by Akira Tanaguchi appears in Physics World magazine (information)