New Robot Can Identify Wines, Cheeses

A "Winebot," or a robot that can taste, fires off a beam of infrared light from its left arm to a bottle of Shiraz, and tell the kind of wine during a demonstration at a laboratory in Tsu, central Japan, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2006. Some of the light is absorbed and the light that returns is then analyzed in real time to determine the object´s chemical content. Researchers at NEC System Technologies and Mie University have designed the robot, a mechanical sommelier, that is able to identify dozens of different kinds of wine, cheeses and hors d´oeuvres. (AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

(AP) -- The ability to discern good wine from bad, name the specific brand from a tiny sip and recommend a complementary cheese would seem to be about as human a skill as there is. In Japan, robots are doing it.