An artificial mouth that can reproduce the mush created by a human munching on an apple has been created by French researchers.

It could form part of a robotic taste-tester designed to improve food quality and our understanding of flavour.

Previous groups have developed artificial mouths that can analyse soft foods or sets of robotic jaws to test teeth. But, until now, none has been able to recreate what happens when a human chows down on hard foodstuffs.

Taste test

Many of the flavours we taste are generated by the release of volatile compounds from food, which pass around the back of the mouth and up into the nose.

Hard foods release those compounds differently according to whether they are crushed, sliced, or liquidised.

So if a robotic system is going to "experience" the same tastes that humans do when eating, the food must undergo the same changes that occur in the mouth, says Gaëlle Arvisenet at ENITIAA in Nantes, France.

Pulp friction