This AI-powered 'electronic tongue' tells if your food is spoiled
In a groundbreaking development, scientists have created a new "electronic tongue," a system that employs artificial intelligence (AI) to detect potential issues with food freshness and safety. The device can differentiate between different coffee blends and even tell when a drink is on the verge of spoiling. The development was detailed in the journal Nature.
How does the 'electronic tongue' function?
The "electronic tongue" works on an ion-sensitive field-effect transistor, a device built to detect chemical ions. The sensor collects information about the ions in a liquid, and translates it into an electrical signal that a computer can process. Here, the sensor acts as the tongue and AI as the gustatory cortex, which is responsible for taste perception.
AI and sensor mimic human taste perception
The research team, led by Saptarshi Das from Penn State University, hooked the sensor to an artificial neural network. This machine learning (ML) program mimics the way human brain processes information. Das said their goal wasn't just to create an artificial tongue but to mimic the complex process of how we perceive different foods, which is more than just the tongue.
'Electronic tongue' demonstrates high accuracy in acidity analysis
Initially, the research team gave the neural network a set of parameters to define a liquid's acidity. With these parameters, the network achieved an accuracy rate of around 91%. However, when it was given the freedom to define its own parameters for acidity analysis, its accuracy improved to over 95%. This shows that the "electronic tongue" can adapt and learn to improve its performance.
Test on real-world beverages
The "electronic tongue" was tested on real beverages, showing its capability to tell apart similar soft drinks or coffee blends. It could even detect if milk had been diluted, tell when fruit juice had spoiled, and spot harmful per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in water. These successful tests show the device's potential for practical use in food safety and quality control.
