Hey Beer Glass, pour me another

Making the most of your time in the pub could be a lot easier in future, thanks to a
smart glass that watches the level of liquid and automatically alerts the bar staff when
it gets dangerously low.

By Rupert Goodwins
ZDNet (UK)

The device, prototyped by Mitubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, uses a transparent conductor around the sides of the glass that detects
changes in capacitance caused by the lowering refreshment within.

When this reaches a preset level, a radio-frequency ID chip in the base of the glass emits a
signal that is picked up by sensors in the establishment’s tables. These are networked to the
bar, where attentive staff immediately respond to the imminent emergency and recharge the
depleted receptacle. RFID chips are currently under development by many companies and
research organisations, and promise to bring this sort of intelligence to a very wide variety of
everyday objects.

This is far from the only
technology MERL is
developing with applications
for the social drinker.
Projects that turn circular
tables into ad-hoc shared
desktop environments will
enable numerous pub
games, the Voice Puppet
that animates any image to
your voice will let you send a
video conference call home
"from the office" explaining
why you’re late, artificial
intelligence video systems
that determine gender will
help avoid embarrassing
mistakes towards the end of
an evening, while the
Personal Digital Historian (PDH)–a system that collates your own sound, picture and video
files–will serve to remind the over-refreshed of what they actually got up to thereafter.

However, there is no sign of a good enough artificial intelligence that can talk the determined
out of consuming too much, and no project underway to locate and recruit the attentive bar
staff necessary to make all of the above a real proposition.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1103-875508.html