Tasting Digital: How The Way You Sense The World Will Change In The Next Decade
By Nimesha Ranasinghe, University of Maine, and his teams
One of 6G’s promises, according to a paper published by Ericsson, is the emergence of the Internet of Senses, an era where humans will not only be able to see or listen to the digital world but feel it as well – smell it, touch it, taste it.
Among the researchers working on this kind of interactivity is Nimesha Ranasinghe, Assistant Professor at the University of Maine. He has been looking into sensing since 2008 and has come up with some tools that are functional today.
The Vocktail: A bottle that lets the user personalise the taste of the water. It is equipped with aroma tubes and LED lights to enhance the experience, and electrodes responsible for stimulating the tongue. There is also an app that controls the taste.
The Virtual Lemonade: A set of appliances that allow a person to share a taste over the internet. It is equipped with a sensor that captures the colour and pH of a real lemonade.
The Virtual Lollipop: A system that simulates tastes as in a lollipop.
“When we [completely] move to 5G and then 6G and beyond, I think we will start to add new solutions, like the virtual reality experience. We will be able to create technologies to immediately connect to someone else’s stream in virtual reality. And then you are not there only with the visual aspects, but also [others like] the haptic sensations,” Ranasinghe said. “Researchers around the world are looking at other potential applications. The Internet of Things is one of the aspects which has huge potential.”
Ericsson, NEC, and CEA Top EU 6G Research Funding
In April, 6GWorld published a series of articles digging into the European Union’s investments in 6G research, using the CORDIS database to gather the data. The investigation showed that the EU has made €95.1 million(US$108.9million) available for Beyond 5G- and 6G-specific research between 2017 and 2025.
Flourish logoA Flourish chart
The statistics showed that there are at least 20 initiatives focused on the next generation of connectivity under way or already carried out by European players.
Among these players, Ericsson, NEC Laboratories and CEA (Commissariat a L’Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives) received the most funding. Combined, the European Union streamed over €8.5 million into these companies for research.
