Anything that has insect-legs that is sitting on a fruit, I try to avoid.  But in this case, I’m going to make an exception.  The Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME in Schmallenberg and for Physical Measurement Techniques IPM in Freiburg have come together to create a device for checking out whether fruit is ripe or not.

The device checks the gas emissions online and then analyzes the gases emitted from the fruit to determine whether the food is fresh or not.  The team at Fraunhofer is working on a prototype of the device and believes that it will cost thousands of dollars each to purchase somewhere down the line..

This could be useful for grocery store companies that want to verify whether the fruit sold by suppliers is legit.  If the fruit turns out to be bad, the grocery companies could ask for a refund, saving them costs and ensuring grocery customers receive higher quality food at point of purchase.

[via Physorg/Engadget]

At the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems in Germany, several researchers are trying a new concept that revolve around embedding a head-mounted microdisplay onto a pair of glasses.  This gives the user the ability to access different information based on simple eye movements.

Here is a description of how the chip works on the eyeglasses:

The iPoint 3D, developed by experts at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications, Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, HHI (Hall 9, Stand B36) have put together a way to communicate with a 3D display through simple gestures without touching it.  It will be demoed for the first time at the CeBIT conference on March 3-8.  The iPoint 3D is a recognition device that can be suspended from the ceiling or integrated into a coffee table.

The device has two built-in cameras to detect hand and finger movement to transmit to a computer.  HHI believes that this device is especially useful for video game enthusiasts and hospital operating rooms.  There are an unlimited number of reasons why this could be useful.  Another example that HHI gives is someone in the kitchen cooking whose hands are covered in sticky dough.

[via Fraunhofer, Engadget]