Sun Journal features Ranasinghe’s virtual cocktail creation

The Sun Journal highlighted Nimesha Ranasinghe in a story that imagines a New Year’s Eve of drinking with no calories or hangover and eating broccoli and tasting chicken wings. Ranasinghe, a University of Maine assistant professor in the School of Computing and Information Science, created a vocktail glass with an electronic module on the rim, scent cartridges, air pumps and LED lighting. While it doesn’t turn water into wine — or into lemonade, gin and tonic, or chocolate — it can make people think that it did. As humanity moves from the information era into “the age of experience,” Ranasinghe said creating a multi-sensory environment that includes taste and smell will be crucial. Ranasinghe found that rapid heating and cooling created by changing electrical currents enable him to mimic different taste sensations, from the coolness of a mint to spiciness, according to the story. Ranasinghe adjusts electrical pulses to trick a person’s tongue into sensing bitterness, sourness and other experiences that mix together to simulate a taste. Ranasinghe told the Sun Journal that he’s passionate about pursuing ever more complex virtual creations, hoping someday to replicate texture and taste, to make it possible to eat a sliver of soy and imagine it’s lobster or steak or a Hershey bar … or whatever.