Wine-tasting robot to spot fraudulent bottles

A robotic wine taster, capable of distinguishing between 30 different varieties or blends of grape, has been developed by engineers in Japan. The idea is to automate wine analysis so that retailers and customs officials can easily check that a wine is indeed what its label declares. The wine-bot was developed by scientists from NEC's System Technologies laboratory and Mie University, both in Japan. It is about twice the size of a 3-litre wine box and consists of a microcomputer and an optical sensing instrument. For analysis, a 5 millilitre sample of wine is poured into a tray in front of the machine.