The Role of Novel Taste and Smell Delivery Devices in Facilitating Multisensory and Eating Behaviour Research

Eating is one of the most multisensory experiences in everyday life, where all our five senses (taste, smell, vision, hearing, and touch) are involved. Consequently, the senses and how they interact to form eating experiences has been an emerging topic of study among psychological and neuroscientific researchers. Having well-designed devices to deliver and stimulate individual senses, or a combination of them, is essential to facilitate this research. However, on the one hand, existing devices are often costly in terms of price, setup time, and lack of flexibility (i.e. ETT devices ( http://www.emergingtechtrans.com/ )). On the other hand, existing prototypes developed in the context of human–food interaction offer ease in operating but often focus narrowly on a particular area of application (i.e. using chocolate―EdiPulse ( https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3025453.3025980 ), lollipop―LOLLio ( https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2460625.2460675 ), cookies in virtual reality―Metacookies ( https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-642-22021-0_29 )). Here, we discuss a novel approach to designing multisensory delivery devices, mainly focusing on smell and taste, with their implementations in two prototypes: TasteBud Plus and LeviSense. We aim to offer a flexible way to deliver combinations of five senses, with a high degree of adaptability and customization, with the additional benefit of plug-and-play to minimize the researcher’s workload in operating the devices.