Development of Food Texture Sensor Using Two Magnetic Sensing Elements

Abstract

An effective evaluation method of food texture is required for food development. A conventional evaluation method is sensory test-based evaluation. Although the sensory test directly evaluates food texture, it requires many subjects and high cost. Another evaluation method is a use of food texture instruments. The instruments quantify food texture. However, its sensor has the simple function which measures load. Its evaluation performance is not enough for food texture evaluation. In this paper, we propose a food texture sensor. The sensor is based on a human tooth, and has the structure which is composed of a contactor, an elastomer membrane and a base. Two kinds of sensing elements detect displacement of the contactor. The sensing elements work as fast and slow adaptive receptors. In this paper, first the structure and function of human tooth are described. Second, the structure of the sensor is illustrated, and the principle is explained. Finally, a fabricated prototype is demonstrated. In addition, the effectiveness of the sensor is confirmed through experiments using the prototype and foods.

The perceptually-inspired model of tactile texture sensor based on the inverse-magnetostrictive effect

“…Here, considering the Galfenol sheet, l = 69.67 mm, b = 5 mm, h = 0.7 mm, E = 70 MPa, d = 34 T/GPa. For the detecting coil, N = 200, S = 3.5 mm 2 (Nakamoto et al, 2015;Zheng et al, 2018;Wan et al, 2017). For the other parameters, the speed of conveyor belt, v = 2 cm/s, and h 1 = A.…”

“…The texture features are characterized by texture height, bump width and spatial period. Nakamoto et al (2015) stated that the perception of texture is intimately related to the trajectory traced by the probe. In particular, they identified the value of texture spacing at which the probe can exactly fall between two texture dots as drop point.…”

Gas sensing technology for meat quality assessment: A review

“…(Li et al, 2020) combined electronic nose and electronic tongue to detect chicken adulterated with soy protein or starch. In addition, novel sensors by simulating human touch are also being developed and successfully applied to food texture measurement (Nakamoto, Nishikubo, Kobayashi, & Kojima, 2015). Extraction of meat information from different dimensions and fusing them can solve the problems caused by meat flavor additives to some extent.…”