Singaporean researchers invent way to ‘teleport’ drinks

While the act of physical teleportation remains in the realms of sci-fi, National University of Singapore (NUS) researchers have now developed a way to transmit a drink over the Internet — or at least replicate the taste of a particular drink from anywhere, at any moment on the planet.

The project, led by Dr Nimesha Ranasinghe, was presented to the public last month at a conference in Yokohoma, Japan. At present, the researchers are only able to replicate the taste of lemonade online, but work is underway to transmit more sophisticated flavours in the future.

How the “virtual lemonade” works is through the combination of a special “lemonade sensor” and a tumbler with electrical diodes.

The “lemonade sensor” is actually two sensors in one device: The first sensor detects the colour of the drink, the other measures the drink’s pH level (a numeric scale used to specify the acidity of a solution).

After these two attributes are recorded, the information is then transmitted online to the customised tumbler, which is filled with just plain water. The tumbler then uses LED lights at its bottom to replicate the colour of the drink, while electrodes around the rim send electrical pulses to your taste buds in order to mimic sourness.

The process is almost instantaneous, as demonstrated to TODAY by Dr Ranasinghe and his team. With the sensor set up in one room, and the tumbler in another, this reporter was able to conduct a taste test comparing the original lemonade and the virtual one. Except for a little more sweetness in the store-bought lemonade, the virtual lemonade was practically identical in taste.