Artificial ‘tongue’ could help tackle the counterfeit alcohol trade, scientists say
An artificial ‘tongue’ which can taste subtle differences between drams of whisky could help tackle the counterfeit alcohol trade, scientists say.
Engineers have built a tiny taster which exploits the properties of gold and aluminium to test differences between the spirits.
The technology is capable of picking up on the subtler distinctions between the same brand aged in different barrels, with more than 99 per cent accuracy.
It is also able to tell the difference between spirits aged for 12, 15 and 18 years.
Alasdair Clark, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Engineering, said: ‘We call this an artificial tongue because it acts similarly to a human tongue - like us, it can’t identify the individual chemicals which make coffee taste different to apple juice but it can easily tell the difference between these complex chemical mixtures.
‘We’re not the first researchers to make an artificial tongue, but we’re the first to make a single artificial tongue that uses two different types of nanoscale metal ‘tastebuds’, which provides more information about the ‘ taste’ of each sample and allows a faster and more accurate response.
‘ While we’ve focused on whisky in this experiment, the artificial tongue could easily be used to ‘ taste’ virtually any liquid, which means it could be used for a wide variety of applications.’
Dr Clark added: ‘In addition to its obvious potential for use in identifying counterfeit alcohols, it could be used in food safety testing, quality control, security - really any area where a portable, reusable method of tasting would be useful.’