Beer mats for 21st Century !!!

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4298344.stm


Hi-tech beermats for 21st Century

An intelligent beermat that alerts the bartender
that your glass is empty could feature in pubs of the future.

Like an ordinary mat, it absorbs drips; but the
gadget also has hidden sensors.

The device will detect the weight of the drink
above it, working out how much is left before
sending a signal to the bar for a refill.

The coaster can also tell which way up it is, and
whether it's moving around. The creators think
the mat could be used for voting in pub games.

This might be handy in a karaoke bar, for
example, where the audience has to decide whether
the performer should continue or stop.

"If they just raise their glass, that's a
positive vote; if they raise their glass and flip
over the beer mat, that's a negative vote,"
explained Professor Andreas Butz, at the University of Munich, Germany.

He supervised two students - Matthias Hahnen and
Robert Doerr - as they developed their concept
for an everyday object that could be enriched by computers.

Given the reputation of students, it was perhaps
no surprise the pair - one is a product-design
student, the other a computer scientist - had the
idea of a beermat containing embedded circuitry.

"It has two sensors - one that can measure the
weight of a glass that's resting on it, and a
gravity sensor so it can know whether it's
flipped upside down," explained Professor Butz.

"You can distinguish a lot of weight as a full
glass, a little weight as an empty glass - no
weight means somebody has lifted their glass."

When drinks are low, a blinking light at the bar
could let the waiter know to check that table for a top-up.

Because the mat can also sense being picked up
and flapped around, customers can signal an order
- with the urgency judged by the speed it is moved.

Another feature is that drinkers can say how many
drinks they would like to order by stacking of a number of mats in one hand.

The final design consists of a flat, cylindrical
body, which contains the electronics; and a
rectangular recess on the top that holds a conventional cardboard beermat.

The present cost to make a single mat is around
US$100 (£60), but this would be around 10 times
cheaper if they went into mass production, say
the students who work out of Saarland University.