This smart toilet recognizes your butt and analyzes poo for diseases
This experimental toilet identifies users by their finger and anal prints while gathering data for urine and stool analysis, a new study reports.
Going to the bathroom could end up relieving your health anxieties as well as your bladder. According to a new study, researchers have created a smart toilet that can analyze faeces and urine for various diseases and some forms of cancer. The experimental toilet can also identify the users by both their unique fingerprints and even anal prints.
The researchers from Stanford University published their findings in a new study in Nature Biomedical Engineering science journal on Monday. Twenty-one participants tested the smart toilet over the course of several months.
"The smart toilet is the perfect way to harness a source of data that's typically ignored; and the user doesn't have to do anything differently," lead study researcher Sanjiv Gambhir said in a statement on Monday.
The toilet used for the study was actually a basic toilet with high-tech motion-sensing tools attached inside the bowl. The toilet records video of the user's urine and feces, which are then processed by algorithms that can determine urine stream time and volume, as well as a stool sample's viscosity.
The experimental toilet also uses uranalysis strips to measure the urine's white blood cell count and detect levels of proteins that best determine if the user is healthy or suffering from bladder infections, cancers, diabetes or possible kidney failure.
The collected toilet data is stored in a cloud-based system for doctors to access later.
One of the more unusual features of this smart toilet includes a built-in identification system that reads the user's fingerprints on the toilet flush handle, and even weirder... an anus-recognition system.
"The whole point is to provide precise, individualized health feedback, so we needed to make sure the toilet could discern between users," Gambhir said. "We know it seems weird, but as it turns out, your anal print is unique."
The anal and fingerprint scans enable users to be matched to their specific data which comes in handy if more than one person is using the same smart toilet. While the toilet does take scans of the anal print, it does not share those images to the user's cloud or doctors.
What's next? More participants in the study and the ability to integrate molecular features into stool analysis.
""That's a bit trickier," said Gambhir, "but we're working toward it."
You should read it
- It's Equal Pay Day, but the gender pay gap could be widening in tech
- 10 Best Tech Programs for High School Students
- Portrait of 12 powerful women who rule the high-tech world today
- 10 Must-Have Gadgets for the Modern Tech Enthusiast
- Great times to buy hi-tech
- Why can iPhone X become Apple's silly tech joke?
- Buy old hi-tech, go to 'tradesman' also tricked!
- N-Tech, a cheap 4K projector, all in one, wireless, compact
- Tech Startups: Driving Innovation in the Digital Age
- The strange, thorny and sometimes sleazy origins of 11 tech terms you probably hear every day
- Reviews ThinkPad X1 and Project Limitless at Lenovo Tech World 2019
- How Advanced Is AI Video Tech Really?
Maybe you are interested
The killer bird blinds and defeats poisonous African snakes The Japanese can make flying cars, just like high-speed maglev trains What happens when lightning strikes a lake? Is it good to eat guava, including the skin? 10 strangest military vehicles in world history Captured electrons moving at 7,920,000 km/h