Augment Your Tongue & Taste Your Data In The Form Of Tingles

If there is one of our five senses that gets left out of our technology enhanced world, it would have to be our sense of taste. Sure, there are some innovations that incorporate taste into their design, but for the most part, our tongue gets left out most of the time. All that could soon change though with this Tongueduino (a tongue version of an Arduino). According to New Scientist, this interface will let you taste your data in tingles.

The reason these technology tongue tingles could be significant is because most scientists agree that we underestimate our tongues. Our tongues can learn and adapt, and imagine if we could perceive our data though our tongues. This may sound outlandish and somewhat ridiculous, but to the researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Georgia Institute of Technology, this represents some serious advancement in the field of perception.

The Tongueduino provides a hackable, high bandwidth sensory augmentation in the form of a small pad. According to the New Scientist article, “When hooked up to an electronic sensor, the pad converts signals from the sensor into small pulses of electric current across the grid, which the tongue reads as a pattern of tingles.”

Imagine the possibilities if there was a wireless version of what you see in the video below. It would allow the user to perceive all kinds of information via tongue tingles without any kind of augmented reality glasses or other bulky device or headset. Apparently the brain reacts fast to this type of stimuli, and it integrates it immediately into the other senses. It’s would be a whole new way to perceive our environment.

For example, if you were to read the information on a compass through tongue tingles, you would know through that which way was north or south. It sounds a little out there, but that is just because we aren’t used to perceiving things through tongue tingles. If you want to see another awesome combination of tongues and technology, check out the World’s First Cookie Flavored Lickable Wallpaper.