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‘Research and Development Center for Five-Sense Devices’, which has been established on 1st Nov, 2018 aiming at the fusion of the ‘Five Sense Research’ as representative advanced research of Kyushu university. The previous ‘Research and Development Center for Taste and Odor Sensing’ in Kyushu university, which was founded on Nov 1st, 2013 under the direction of Prof. Kiyoshi Toko (Institute for Advanced Study, Kyushu University), has served as the world’s only research center of excellence possessing international initiatives covering from basic research to societal implementation. Human collects external information through the five senses of vision, audition, tactile sensation, olfaction, and gustation to perceive, analyze and comprehend the surrounding environment. In other words, based on detected multiple information from the respective sensing systems simultaneously and independently, we can recognize various situations through perception and integration of the sensory information. The human’s senses and their response mechanisms could be considered exactly as an ultimate sensing device.

Gustation and olfaction could be considered as chemical sensing of the quantity and quality of targeted external compounds, and vision, audition, and tactile sensation could be considered as physical sensing based on light, shape, temperature, pressure, and frequency, etc. Upon the second period of the Center (Nov. 1st, 2020), the ‘Taste Sensor’ and ‘Odor Sensor’ divisions regarding chemical sensing researches are combined to be as a Division of ‘Taste・Odor sensor’. In addition to the renewal (the three divisions of ‘Taste・Odor Sensor’, ‘Applied Medical Sensing’, and ‘Sensory Physiology’, a new ‘Integrated Research for Five-sense devices’ division, which strongly promote and fuse researches regarding human’s five sense recognition, has been participated to the Center. The new Division hopefully functions to play an organic coordination research beyond the 3 divisions.
Furthermore, the Center consists of Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Faculty of Dental Science, and Kyushu University Hospital as well as Faculty of Design, Faculty of Arts and Science, and Faculty of Human-Environmental Studies, which encompasses a wide variety of academic areas beyond Humanities and Sciences. That is, with the foundation of the world-leading taste and odor sensing technique, we believe that the renewed ‘Research and Development Center for Five-Sense Devices’ will become a world-unique interdisciplinary academic platform for synergy research through organic coordination of researchers of respective specialized field of the five senses. We appreciate the understanding and support from both in and outside of Japan.