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Danger, Will Robinson--That Cheese Doesn't Match
Posted by perle0 on 2006-11-23 23:59:07
(4142 views) 
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[News]
[Japan] |
 Researchers in Japan have developed a robot wine sommelier. This nifty gadget can "taste" a wine, identify it by brand and type, and suggest a good cheese or hors d'oevre to accompany it. The robot, a prototype, would currently cost as much as a car and can only be programmed to identify a few dozen wines, but that's still more than many humans can manage. It can be personalized to suit an owner's taste in wines, and can also perform other useful analysis, like determining the relative sweetness of a piece of fruit.
There are a few kinks to be worked out, though. The robot becomes less accurate once a wine has had a chance to breathe, since that process changes its chemistry somewhat. It also has an odd habit of identifying humans as prosciutto or bacon. (I suppose chemically, we're not too different, especially if we've been sweating a bit so we're nice and salty.) |
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Still, the robot has one great advantage. Since it "tastes" a wine using an infrared spectrometer at the end of its arm, reflecting back light and analyzing it to reveal the chemical makeup of the substance being studied, it can examine wine which is still sealed in the bottle. Wineries may be interested in using the device to examine its wines once they are bottled to reveal any problems. (Although the researchers didn't mention it, the possibility that it could be used to detect wine which has been corked or heat-damaged prior to purchase would be VERY interesting to a lot of wine-lovers out there.) |
Details. |
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