This robot will test your Thai food's authenticity

This robot will test your Thai food&#039;s authenticity

(Image credit: iStock)

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.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Explore More

Samantha Rollins is TheWeek.com's news editor. She has previously worked for The New York Times and TIME and is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.