An Israeli company has developed a device the size of a USB stick so that the public in general can know what a food, plant, medicine or tissue is made up of in a few seconds.
In time, this mini-scanner could be integrated into a mobile phone, just like a camera, and it could let users know with a click how many calories a hamburger has, when an avocado will mature, or if the jacket we are about to buy is really made out of leather.
"Its a personal laboratory in your pocket," said Dror Sharon, founder of Consumer Physics, the emerging company that started marketing this product in August. The product is called Scio, the Latin word for knowing.
This is how it works
Scio is a pocket molecular sensor that scans objects by shinning a Near Infrared Spectroscopy light on objects.
As each molecule reacts with the light it creates a unique vibration, a kind of identifiable signature. The scanner deciphers this vibration automatically, separates it and collects all sorts of chemical properties such as moisture content or the content of fat or sugar in a product; then it makes a record of them with the help of an Internet database.
Thus, the scanner can identify a tomato and determine its level of sugars or maturity when we are shopping for groceries in the market.
However, the scanner wouldn't work to decipher the components of a dish of lasagne, as it is too complex for the moment. The people at Consumer Physics are confident that, with the participation of thousands of people working collaboratively through the Internet, enriching the database of Scio housed in an Internet platform, the capabilities of this product will improve.
Thus, Consumer Physics has made the public their leading engineers-developers and investors.
The product was launched through the Kickstarter funding platform in 2014, and 13,000 Internet users paid $250 dollars to preorder their personal scanners.
Thousands of developers are interested in this device as they feel it is something they can make at home.
