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Acoustic levitator for food transfer

13.10.2017

The SCHI Lab at the University of Sussex has developed a prototype acoustic levitator designed to hold and transport droplets and pieces of food through the air. The authors will make a presentation at the ACM ISS conference, which will be held next week in Brighton (UK).

Sound is an acoustic wave moving through space. Acoustic levitation is based on the fact that emitters directed at each other create a standing wave. Moreover, if an object placed in a standing wave is two or more times smaller than the acoustic wavelength, it will hang in one of these areas.

Despite the fact that acoustic levitators have existed for a long time, such devices are rarely used to solve any practical problems. Now, British engineers have proposed using acoustic levitation for non-contact transportation of food.

Their prototype, called TastyFloats, can carry small drops and pieces of food, including several different ingredients at the same time. It is assumed that the levitator will move the treat to the person's mouth, after which he can eat food directly from the air.

To demonstrate the performance of their installation, the authors placed several drinks and dishes in the acoustic field, among which, for example, were wine, milk, coffee with milk (two separate drops) and even a microburger consisting of four different pieces (2 pieces of bread, meat and salad ).

The researchers also suggested that food delivered with TastyFloats might taste different, for which they invited 11 volunteers to try drops with three of the five basic tastes: umami, sweet and bitter. Subjects received drops of 5, 10, and 20 microliters per tongue via pipette or TastyFloats and were asked to identify the taste and describe its intensity. It turned out that the delivery of food using an acoustic levitator affects the taste - the volunteers said that sweet was felt more pronounced, while bitter, on the contrary, was felt weak and indistinguishable with this method of delivery.

The developers offer several options for using TastyFloats, among which there are both realistic (delivering desserts or, on the contrary, bitter food) to the mouth, and fantastic projects - for example, one of the proposals describes an "edible cinema" (Edible Cinema), in which built-in similar food dispensers.

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