Why spend on drinks when water tastes like wine!

Novel device Vocktail, a 3-D printed cocktail glass lets user customise liquid into preferred beverages

An interactive drinking device called Vocktail allows users to customise a “virtual cocktail” that researchers say smells, tastes, and looks like the real thing. The research throws open prospects for diabetics who cannot take sugar and blood pressure patients who have to minimise salt intake.

Vocktail digitally simulates distinct tastes, smells, and colours to create new virtual flavours or augment existing flavours in order to achieve the ideal concoction, without physically mixing beverages and ingredients.

Vocktail consists of a cocktail glass seamlessly fused into a 3D-printed base, which holds the electronic control module and three micro air-pumps connected to three scent cartridges. The device is coupled with a mobile application that enables users to create customised virtual flavours by remotely configuring the taste, smell, and colour stimuli via Bluetooth.

Two silver electrodes on the rim of the glass provide controlled electrical currents of different magnitudes and frequencies to the tip of the tongue in order to simulate salty or sour sensations while drinking, which affect the taste of the beverage.

To alter smell, the airpumps release molecules from the chosen scent cartridges directly onto the surface of the beverage, which is close to the user’s nose when drinking. Users can add or change cartridges depending on the desired smell. They are also easily refillable, similar to replacing ink cartridges in a printer.

Lastly, since visual stimuli form pre-taste perceptions, users can select their preferred colour with the mobile application which projects an LED light onto the beverage. The combination of these three stimuli delivers a rich virtual flavour experience, say the researchers.

“You could walk into a bar and order a mojito and using the mobile application, customise it to your preference with, say, a chocolate aroma and a hint of banana or mango. Or you could customise water to taste like your preferred flavoured beverage and save the money,” says research fellow Nimesha Ranasinghe, who led the team at the Keio-NUS Connective Ubiquitous Technology for Embodiments (CUTE) Center.