For those celebrating Thanksgiving today, at some point there will come a time where you is simply too full to move. At this point, the sensible action is to sleep it off before rising later in the day, groggy and disorientated, for a second gorging. But what if technology could help? What if, instead of succumbing to your turkey stupor, some sort of chest-mounted robot arm could lob sweet treats into your open mouth? What a world that would be.
We’ve not reached this gravy-soaked utopia yet, but researchers from Australia and India have taken us one step closer with “Arm-A-Dine” — a robot arm worn in the middle of the chest that picks food up off the table and conveys it to you or your dining partner’s mouth.
The intention isn’t to stuff you till you explode, though: Arm-A-Dine is actually a prototype designed to augment the social experience of eating. In a research paper from the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University in Australia and the Indian Institute of Information Technology Design, researchers explain how most food tech is focused on the preparation of food and not the eating experience.
The intention isn’t to stuff you till you explode, though: Arm-A-Dine is actually a prototype designed to augment the social experience of eating. In a research paper from the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University in Australia and the Indian Institute of Information Technology Design, researchers explain how most food tech is focused on the preparation of food and not the eating experience.
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SOURCE: James Vincent
The Verge
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