Touchscreens Can Detect Baked Goods

Florian Heller, a postdoctoral researcher at the Expertise Center for Digital Media at Hasselt University in Belgium, realized that the electrical field of the capacitive layer of a touchscreen display could be altered by conductive materials other than human skin and metal, according to gizmodo.com. Baked goods, especially when fresh out of the oven, contain enough moisture and humidity to be electrically conductive, which is all that is needed for a capacitive touchscreen interaction to be acknowledged.

In a recently published paper, “Muffidgets: Detecting and Identifying Edible Pastry Tangibles on Capacitive Touchscreens”, Heller details a special baking method they devised. The pastry itself (in this case, a muffin) was created using a standard recipe that included sunflower oil and water but at the bottom of the paper cups, circular baking wafers with notches were inserted so that after baking, the bottom of each muffin was left with a specific pattern of touch points. Because capacitive touchscreens can recognize multiple points of touch at the same time, Heller was able to design a series of different footprint patterns that allow a device like an iPad to tell different baked goods apart.

There are several practical applications like using the touchpoints as a way to identify the ingredients of a specific pastry, including potential allergens, by simply plopping it down on the phone’s screen. As an informational tool, it could also provide details on a pastry’s calorie count, the presence of animal products, or it could simply trigger a link to the recipe.