What if your milk bottle could tell you if your milk is on the turn? No, you’re not hallucinating from drinking milk past its best.
This is the idea behind a new 3D-printed smart cap for liquid storage bottles and food storage containers from researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.
The cap is fitted with 3D-printed electronics with wireless sensors that continually analyze the product and alert users if there are bacteria present, causing food spoilage, a paper published in Nature reports.
The information could then be wirelessly transmitted to a mobile app or an interactive fridge screen to notify the consumer.
How the smart cap works. Sung-Yueh Wu.
“This 3D-printing technology could eventually make electronic circuits cheap enough to be added to packaging to provide food safety alerts for consumers,” said Liwei Lin, senior author of the study, in a statement. “One day, people may simply download 3D-printing files from the Internet with customized shapes and colors and print out useful devices at home.”
If the smart caps do go into production, there’ll soon be no more crying over accidentally sipped cheesy milk.
[H/T: Engadget]
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