From Imitation to Invention

Baidu CEO Robin Li gives a presentation introducing his company’s newest product – smart chopsticks.
Baidu CEO Robin Li gives a presentation introducing his company’s newest product – smart chopsticks.

 

Baidu CEO Robin Li gives a presentation introducing his company’s newest product – smart chopsticks.

According to the Wall Street Journal on Sept. 3 (local time), Chinese web giant Baidu has developed so-called “smart chopsticks,” which can find out whether foods have gone bad.

Known as Kuaisou in Chinese, these chopsticks can measure the freshness of cooking oil, pH levels and temperature of liquid, and the calories of fruit. It is possible to find out whether oil has gone bad by measuring the freshness of cooking oil. The term pH is a measurement of the acidity of a solution. People can see the results of experiments with a smartphone app connected to the chopsticks.

At the company’s annual technology conference, Baidu CEO Robin Li introduced this product by saying it was “a new way to sense the world.” He added, “In the future, via Baidu Kuaisou, you’ll be able to know the origin of oil and water and other foods, whether they’ve gone bad, and what sort of nutrition they contain."

Since the firm is not quite ready for the mass production of the product, the price of the chopsticks hasn’t been announced yet.

The newspaper reported, “Baidu has mimicked products previously pioneered by Google, including its own homegrown answers to Google Glass and Google’s driverless cars. But in inventing the smart chopsticks, there’s no doubt that it has produced a product with decidedly Chinese characteristics.”

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