sensor wireless inc. makes replicas of products such as potatoes or eggs (left) and glass bottles (right) outfitted with sensors (probably accelerometers) so that manufacturers can track damage to the product along the assembly line in real-time on PDAs. i first learned about the smart spud ™ while visiting frito-lay, because the conveyor belts and ramps need to be especially designed to avoid bruising the potatoes so that the chips are totally homogeneous. first, i wonder what kind of information consumers would be interested in tracking in a product, and second, if this kind of sensor could one day be integrated into the product, or better yet, third, whether an intelligent enough system could detect bruising (physical and moral) along the production line of an item with enough accuracy to trace it to its source.
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