From
NEC Technologies comes this cute little guy, billed as the world's first robot sommelier. It can "taste" wines, differentiate between several dozen brands, and even recommend food to go along with them. And you don't even have to open the bottle--the sensor on its arm shines infrared light into your wine of choice, and determines the ingredients based on what wavelengths are absorbed. The company also says it would be possible to personalize one of the robots to be able to decide whether its owner would like a particular wine or not.
In initial design stages, it was trained to taste a variety of foods before the researchers decided to focus on the subtleties of wine "because that seemed like a real challenge." But perhaps the limited ingredients actually made its job easier: at an
earlier demonstration of the robot in 2006, "when a reporter’s hand was placed against the robot’s taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. Subsequently, a cameraman was mistaken for bacon."
03-16-2008, 03:07 PM
Threaded Mode