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Augmented Reality Cookies, Anyone? We're Stuffed, Thanks.

by Matthew Zuras on July 31, 2010 at 11:00 AM

the meta cookie system
We understand that SIGGRAPH frequently exhibits the most outre and ridiculous tech experiments -- the ones that could be useful on a larger scale and within a different context. But Takuji Narumi of Tokyo University may be the winner of the Most Insane Research award for his Meta Cookie System, which seems to serve no purpose but to advance the idea that our future lies in a simulated reality matrix. Nerds, you do yourselves no favors by inventing contraptions like this.

First, you strap a giant augmented reality headset around your skull as you are fed a plain sugar cookie, marked with an L-shaped symbol, which the system's camera will detect as it comes near your confused face. On the helmet screen, you'll see a virtual cookie headed toward you, while tubes funnel synthetic cookie fumes into your nasal cavity. Allegedly, this will make the plain cookie taste like snickerdoodle, or whatever your helmet has programmed.

What an excellent use of research funds! Sure, this could possibly help solve the riddles of gustatory sensation that haven't yet been plumbed by otolaryngologists and the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. But, then again, Narumi is a tech researcher who has co-authored articles with terrifying titles like "Mobile interface using visible-light communication technology for pervasive computing environment." (Emphasis ours.) We don't want computers to pervade our cookies, thanks very much. [From: MSNBC]

Tags: AugmentedReality, cookies, food, MetaCookieSystem, OnlyInJapan, research, SIGGRAPH, Siggraph2010, TakujiNarumi, TokyoUniversity, top, weird

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