This is something fascinating I stumbled upon today.
So, the tldr is that researchers from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) have developed a fascinating tool to check if milk has gone bad. And all you need to have is a smart phone.
Before I read the actual press release my first guess was that it would use some advanced camera hocus pocus or something that would recognize discoloration or whatever that the human eye can't... see...
But here's the even more fascinating and ingenious part.
The testing can be done without opening the container...wtf? How would that even work!
So here's the quick gist.
The concept works by having the phone to send vibrations through the milk container. Then the data are collected and with a bit of machine learning magic it determines the milk’s pH levels, hence its freshness or spoilage.
The researchers claim their method is highly reliable, super cheap and as aforementioned...totally non invasive.
practical and efficient solution to this problem is proposed in this paper: a vibration-based milk spoilage detection method called VibMilk that utilizes the ubiquitous vibration motor and Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) of off-the-shelf smartphones. The method detects spoilage based on the fact that the milk’s physical properties change, inducing different vibration responses at various stages of degradation.
According to the published paper, VibMilk achieves 98.35% accuracy in detecting milk spoilage across 23 different stages, from fresh (pH = 6.6) to fully spoiled (pH = 4.4). Not bad!
At the moment the researchers are working to make the app more efficient with different packaging materials.
Theoretically, this technical could have environmental, economic, and social implications.
Will it see mainstream adoption thought? Dunno, time will tell I guess. I certainly don't see my self using it every time I go to shop some milk. Maybe I would do it a couple of times for the novelty but that's it. Call me lazy 🙃😜😄
Still, it shows all the tricks our smartphones can pull with a bit of ingenuity! Sky is literally the meaning 😄
Here's a link to paper if you want a thorough read on Vibmilk and here's a link to the dumbed down press release.
Enjoy!
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