Robots Could Taste Food Like Humans with an ‘Electronic Tongue’

“Understanding human behavior is easy to see but hard to measure, which makes it tough to teach a robot to be emotionally smart. Right now, there’s no clear way to do it,” said Saptarshi Das, an engineering professor at Penn State.

Das and his team recently designed a robot that can “taste” molecules using a special device they created called an “electronic gustatory complex.” They used super-thin sensors called chemitransistors, made from graphene, to detect tiny gas and chemical particles.

They combined these with memtransistors made from molybdenum disulfide, which can simulate neurons. These two parts worked together, using their different strengths to simulate the ability to “taste” things at the molecular level.

“Graphene is really good at sensing chemicals, but it’s not great for making circuits that work like the brain,” explained Andrew Pannone, a graduate student on the team. “So, we used molybdenum disulfide. By combining these materials, we made a circuit that acts like the sense of taste in the brain.”