Baidu Kuaisou "smart chopsticks" are designed to detect gutter oil, which is dredged from sewers or garbage disposals and sold to restaurants.
Update 14-Nov-2015: Both videos are new!
(Baidu Kuaisou chopsticks)
The product was hyped today at Baidu's annual conference in Beijing, alongside a Google Glass-like product called Baidu Eye. But Kuaisuo, like the recently-introduced Vessyl smart cup, reportedly uses a series of sensors to determine metrics like oil quality, temperature, PH levels, and even calories, then transmits that information to an app. A tiny blue LED at the tip of the chopsticks would give you an on-sight reading.
Exotic food fans of Dune, the 1965 novel by Frank Herbert, are familiar with the poison snoopers used to detect poison in the food (chaumas):
Paul saw his father in the doorway, avoided his eyes. He looked around at the clusterings of guests, the jeweled hands clutching drinks (and the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers)...
Pausing in the doorway to inspect the arrangements, the Duke thought about the poison-snooper and what it signified in his society. All of a pattern, he thought. You can plumb us by our language--the precise and delicate delineations for ways to administer treacherous death. Will someone try chaumurky tonight--poison in the drink? Or will it be chaumas--poison in the food?
Via Gizmodo; thanks to Peter Jacobs for writing in with the tip and the reference.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 9/12/2014)
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
Poul Anderson's 'Brain Wave'
"Everybody and his dog, it seemed, wanted to live out in the country; transportation and communication were no longer isolating factors."
AI Note-Taking From Google Meet
'... the new typewriter that could be talked to, and which transposed the spoken sound into typed words.'