Anyone who has had a particularly lame imitation of pad thai can tell you that not all Thai food is created equal. This fact is painfully obvious to the Thai government. It's so obvious, in fact, that even though former Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra was ousted by a military coup in May, her plan to develop official standards for traditional Thai dishes with the help of a taste-testing robot are continuing on without her.
Yes, the Thai government has developed and financed the Thai Delicious Committee, which has been tasked with developing a taste-testing robot that measures a dish's components and gives it an authenticity score. The robot, according to The New York Times, "measures smell and taste in food ingredients through sensor technology in order to measure taste like a food critic." The Times continues:
A boxy contraption filled with sensors and microchips, the so-called e-delicious machine scans food samples to produce a chemical signature, which it measures against a standard deemed to be the authentic version. [...] The machine evaluates food by measuring its conductivity at different voltages. Readings from 10 sensors are combined to produce the chemical signature. [The New York Times]
I, for one, welcome our foodie robot overlords. Read the whole story at The New York Times.
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