• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Skip to navigation
Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • COVID-19
    • Delivery & Commerce
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future of Drink
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Podcasts
    • Startups
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Events
  • Newsletter
  • Connect
    • Send us a Tip
    • Spoon Newsletters
    • Slack
    • RSS
    • The Spoon Food Tech Survey Panel
  • Advertise
  • About
    • Staff
  • Become a Member
The Spoon
  • Home
  • News
    • Alternative Protein
    • Business of Food
    • Connected Kitchen
    • Foodtech
    • Food Waste
    • Future Food
    • Future of Grocery
    • Restaurant Tech
    • Robotics, AI & Data
  • Spoon Plus Central
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Slack
  • Advertise
  • About
  • Become a Member

From the Lab: This Smart Fabric Can Identify Foods You Place on It

by Chris Albrecht
November 5, 2020November 5, 2020Filed under:
  • Connected Kitchen
  • Future of Recipes
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)

Researchers at Dartmouth College, Wuhan University, Southeast University, and Microsoft Research have developed a fabric that can identify what foods and other types of objects placed on it (hat tip to Engadget).

Dubbed Capacitivo, the technology attaches a grid of electrodes to a textile. By applying an electric field to the fabric and some machine learning, objects placed on it can be identified by measuring any shift in capacitance.

The technology can detect different types of food, even when those items are inside containers like water glasses and bowls. According to the paper, the tech also has an average accuracy of 90.71 percent.

You might be thinking, “Why would I need my tablecloth to tell me what’s on it, I can see whatever I put on it.” Well, according to the paper, the readings from the fabric could be integrated with other kitchen and cooking apps. For example, you could place a bunch of fruits on a table and based on that have a smoothie recipe suggested to you. When you eat dinner, your meal could automatically be uploaded to a diet tracking app. Or when making a meal, it could provide some form of guided cooking by telling you which ingredients to add and when.

Capacitivo: Contact-Based Object Recognition on Interactive Fabrics using Capacitive Sensing

The technology isn’t perfect. It has a hard time with metallic objects, and researchers said it isn’t very good at identifying specific liquids (e.g. distinguishing a beer from a Coke). But, this is a fist step that it still very much in the lab. With a little imagination, it’s not hard to see how a smart surface like this could be integrated to talk with your appliances to create an even more connected kitchen.


Related

Get the Spoon in your inbox

Just enter your email and we’ll take care of the rest:

Find us on some of these other platforms:

  • Apple Podcasts
  • Spotify
Tagged:
  • research
  • smart table

Post navigation

Previous Post After a Summer Hit by COVID-19, Home Brew Appliance Startup MiniBrew Secures Funding for 2021
Next Post GoPuff Acquires BevMo for $350 Million

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Get The Spoon in Your Inbox

Subscribe to Our Podcast!

Subscribe in iTunes or listen on Spotify.

Here are the Kitchen Robots We Saw at CES & Food Tech Live 2021
Restaurants Hate Third-Party Delivery Services, Actually
Barilla Acquires Pasta Evangelists, a UK-Based Fresh Pasta Delivery Startup
Food Tech News: Muniq Raises $8.2M for Protein Powder, Danone Launches Plant-Based Cheese
Podcast: The CES & Food Tech Live 2021 Review

Footer

  • About
  • Sponsor the Spoon
  • The Spoon Events
  • Spoon Plus

© 2016–2021 The Spoon. All rights reserved.

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.