Robots could be taking our jobs away from us. This may not really be a problem for most, but if you work as a beer-taster, you might soon have to kiss your relaxing and thirst-quenching job goodbye.
A robot, in the form of an electric tongue, was developed by researchers at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, using 12 different ion-selective electrodes that can respond to certain elements, and which was programmed to "taste" beer. In its test runs, it was found to be 82 percent accurate at distinguishing between different brews of beer and detecting their alcohol content.
"Electronic tongue consists in using a generic array of sensors, in other words with generic response to the various chemical compounds involved, which generate a varied spectrum of information with advanced tools for processing, pattern recognition and even artificial neural networks," said Manel del Valle, the main author of the study, in an interview with La Ciencia Es Noticia (SINC).
Beer, being one of the oldest and most popular alcoholic drinks in the world, boasts over different 20 kinds and styles. Being a beer-taster thus comes as a challenge, since beer-tasters are tasked with identifying and defining the characteristics of every beer they taste. Qualities they must identify include texture, flavor, degree of bitterness, and how they all blend together into a unique beer-drinking experience. They are also responsible for recognizing whether any particular beer is either malt-based or hops-based.
The process of fermenting beer can involve over 10,000 different compounds, which can yield just as many possible results and variations in beer. To some degree, conclusions can become subjective. This places a lot of responsibility on the shoulders - and tongues - of human beer-tasters everywhere.
"It's amazing, because you can have two beers that taste identical on the first sip, but by the sixth, seventh, eighth beer, they taste completely different," said Roy Desrochers, a professional beer-taster, in an interview with Draft Magazine. "Some beers, you drink a whole bunch and you continue to get better flavors. Some beers, you drink a couple and you can't taste anything anymore; you blank out. Some beers, the more you drink, the more bitter it seems."
This is where the robot beer-taster comes in. The technology is still being worked out, but the study, published in the journal Food Chemistry, said that tools like the robotic beer-tasting tongue could give robots an enhanced sense of taste someday. This will allow robots to replace human tasters in the food industry, with a method that is more scientific and accurate.
However, will the robots actually be able to measure enjoyable eating or drinking experience? That remains to be seen.
