Electronic Tongues–A Review

Sensing technologies for objective evaluation such as the discrimination and quantification of tastes have been developed since around 1990, before the discovery of taste receptors. Electronic tongues aim to discriminate and analyze foods and beverages and are well known as sensing technologies that greatly contribute to quality management. A taste sensor, i.e., an electronic tongue with global selectivity, is developed to realize a sensor that responds to taste chemical substances and can be used to quantify the type of taste focusing on the fact that humans discriminate the taste of foods and beverages on the tongue with the five basic tastes. In this paper, we focus on the taste sensor and describe its sensing principle, its difference from general electronic tongues that do not aim to quantify tastes, examples of its use, and the recent trend of research of electronic tongues.