2010 Volume 15 Issue 4 Pages 579-588
Gustatory information has rarely been studied in relation to computers, even though there are lots of studies on visual, auditory, haptic and olfactory information. This scarcity of research on gustatory information has several reasons. One reason is that taste sensation is based on chemical signals, whose functions have not been fully understood yet. Another reason is that taste sensation is affected by other factors, such as vision, olfaction, thermal sensation, and memories. Thus, complexity of cognition mechanism for gustatory sensation as described above makes it difficult to build up a gustatory display. Our research utilizes the complexity of cognition mechanism for gustatory sensation, in order to create a pseudo-gustatory display, which induces cross-modal integration by presenting texture and odor. "Meta Cookie" combines augmented reality technology and olfactory display technology. Merging of these two technologies creates a revolutionary interactive gustatory display. With this breakthrough combination of technology, we realize a novel gustatory display system. Pseudo-gustatory display is a novel concept to deal with gustatory information in the area of interactive techniques and open up a new horizon for computer human interaction.
