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04 Sep 2006
A robot being developed in Japan uses infrared spectroscopy to "taste" wine and food.
Choosing a bottle of wine is often a tough task revolving around questions such as price, grape variety and the product's origin. Now, thanks to a sommelier robot developed by at NEC System Technologies and Mie University in Japan, help could be at hand to take the uncertainty out of the decision.
"The robot contains a wine database," Yukie Endo of NEC System Technologies told optics.org. "The database includes various attributes such as country, winery, colour, taste and price. The robot automatically generates questions using the attributes of the database."
The wine-tasting robot builds on research by NEC and Mie University. The team's first robot used infrared spectroscopy to analyze food and estimate the quantities of components such as sugar and fat. According to the scientists involved, the robot identified cheeses such as Edam, Gouda and Camembert and bread types such as baguettes and croissants.
"The robot can identify the food by referring to characteristics in the database," said Endo. "It uses continuous wave infrared light and produces almost a real time response. Some food is easy to distinguish, others are difficult. Wine is a typical example of the latter."
Keen to take up the challenge, Endo and colleagues modified their food-tasting robot to create a Sommelier robot. One of the key modifications was extending the spectroscopy system.
"The sommelier robot uses mid-infrared spectroscopic information," said Endo. "Red or white wine is simply poured onto the sensor. The robot is also now equipped with the ability to ask questions to determine a customer's wine preference."
The team is now developing the spectroscopic "tasting" technology. "The wine robot is an interesting application," concluded Endo. "We plan to improve the tasting technology and wish to commercialise it as a component. It may be used for various applications, such as quality control, games, dieting and health applications. We hope that the wine robot or wine tasting machine will be commercialized by someone in the near future."
Author
Jacqueline Hewett is editor of Optics & Laser Europe magazine.
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