Once again, intelligent technology meets the world of wines. It’s not about a decanter robot that shows the perfect temperature and bottle volume. Neither an app like Uvinum (for iPhone or Android) where you can discover and buy fantastic new wines. This week, a small group of students from the Technological University of Dresden developed a smart wine glass. This glass recognizes and analyzes the amount of consumed alcohol.
How does it work?
The glass is made out of a special material which measures the contained alcohol by pure contact. For exact results, the glass, as well as the wine, have to be clean. The material consists of chemical elements that react in a certain way with alcohol. The higher the alcohol content, the stronger the chemical reaction. This reaction takes place on the glass bottom and remains more or less invisible to the human eye. You’d have to take a closer look to recognize any changes. “You have to imagine, it kind of works like a normal medical thermometer.” explains Paul D. (27), one of the brains behind the operation.
What do I need this for?
Well, this smart wine glass is also connected to an app on your smartphone which currently runs through a beta testing phase. Let’s say, you’re at a dinner with some friends and you still have to drive home. Of course, you can enjoy a bit of wine, you say, but where do you cross the line? How do you know you’re still under the legal 0, 8 permille? Now, the app comes into play. Before starting, you have fed the app with data like age, drinking history, weight and height amongst others. The Wine-O-Meter provides the exact amount of alcohol in your glass of wine and calculates your level. Furthermore, you don’t have to check your mobile device with every sip you take. The moment you’re close to reaching the maximum alcohol level, your wine glass activates special sieve hiding on the glass bottom and filters the alcohol. This way, you can enjoy your wine without worrying about getting drunk. But this Wine-O-Meter doesn’t only protect you from drinking when you’re driving. You can also ask it to warn you when you’re getting too tipsy. The user sets his or her own limits.
Planned improvements
The three students, Paul D., Susanna R. and Xin M., also plan on protecting your love life with this wine able-app. It’s their idea to integrate the Wine-O-Meter with messenger services like WhatsApp and Telegram. Starting a certain level of alcohol, the app blocks these messenger services and protects you from sending embarrassing texts or photos. Besides, at the current state of development, you can only drink wine in it. Our students, however, told us that it’s just a question of feeding more and the correct data in order to enable the glass to also analyze beer, whisky and other drinks. If the project ends in success, there is no reason why this shouldn’t happen.
Disadvantage
This invention is not smart enough to check if you used another wine glass or tried from your friends. So you should keep a little bit disciplined and enjoy wine only from your own smart wine glass.
By: Johanna Hofbauer