The techies at this week's Consumer Electronics Show turn their attention to dinner.
But no longer! As reported by Gizmodo, Fulton Innovations, the creators of eCoupled wireless charging technology, are not content with simply removing our tangled cables—they also want to cook us dinner. By printing an inductive coil directly onto food packaging, they make it receptive to the energy emitted by their eCoupled countertop—which means that you can now heat up a cup of Campbell's Chunky Chicken Noodle just by sitting it on a wireless charging surface. The special packaging even has adjustable settings for reheating at high, medium, and low temperatures.
Although this seems like a strong early candidate for least useful food invention of the year, the technology does have some intriguing other applications. The wireless-responsive packaging could also be used to communicate nutritional information, recall, or use-by-date information directly to your computer, which could in turn automate a variety of useful reminders and alerts to help you eat better and waste less. And the sheer wow factor of cooking soup on your desktop, at least one time, is undeniable.