In this week’s episode of the Engineering Update starring Editor Kasey Panetta (@kcpanetta), Digital Editor Jason Lomberg (@JasonECNMag), and WDD’s Editor-in-Chief, Janine E. Mooney (@JMooneyWDD):
Pizza Hut’s eye-tracking subconscious menu
Not sure what toppings you want on your pizza tonight? Don’t worry — your subconscious already knows. That’s the thinking behind the new eye-tracking Subconscious Menu being introduced at UK Pizza Huts. The eye-tracking system, designed by Tobii Technology, requires diners to watch a Pizza Hot logo move across the screen in order to calibrate the system to their unique eye movements.
Turning any surface into a touch sensor
A Finnish startup, Canatu, announced the creation of carbon nanobuds that could turn almost any surface into a touch sensor. Transparent films – which contain carbon nanobuds, or molecular tubes of carbon with ball-like appendages – are rugged, and because they’re pliable, they could potentially add touch screen controls to flexible devices like curved displays.
The newest solar power plant
The tulip concentrating solar power plant is officially opening its first commercial site in Ethiopia. This will be the third tulip site to be created. There is one in Israel and one in Spain, but the previous operations have been focused on research and study. The Ethiopian solar plant will be the company’s first paid enterprise and will offer an output capacity of 100 kilowatts of electricity with 170 kilo watts of thermal power using about 37,600 square feet of space.
