Video: Simulated taste

Unusual head-wear (Image: Takuji Narumi)

Imagine you could dip your hand in the cookie jar and be guaranteed to pull out whatever flavour you feel like. For cookie-lovers visiting the SIGGRAPH computer graphics and animation conference in Los Angeles, this dream was turned into reality.

We are all used to seeing, hearing and, increasingly, touching computer displays, but there has been little research into how computers can successfully simulate taste. Part of the problem is that taste is generated by a combination of factors working together, including vision, smell and memories.

Tajuki Narumi and colleagues from the University of Tokyo in Japan decided to tackle this problem with a “display” that exploits several senses. Their testbed? The humble cookie.


The device is worn over the user’s head and can transform the taste of a plain cookie to any of seven flavours. It combines augmented reality technology with smells released by an air pump to trick the user’s senses.

Follow the cookie

To create the effect, the team branded a plain cookie with a distinct logo that the headset tracks via a built-in camera. An air pump sprays out the smell of the chosen cookie, increasing its concentration as the system “sees” the cookie approaching the wearer’s nose.

Meanwhile, a visual display in the headset shows an image of the chosen cookie, suggesting the correct texture for that flavour.

The combination of smell and visual texture combine to fool the user’s sense of taste into thinking they are eating a flavoured cookie instead of the plain one.

See more: Beyond the touchscreen: Projecting the future