A Japanese electronics company has developed drinking glasses which signal when they are almost empty so that table staff know when to bring a refill.
The technology is an adaptation of the tagging systems used to try to stop people stealing from shops.
A microchip and a coil in the base of each glass interact with a coating on the surface of the vessel to work out how full it is and then signal this information to a base station.
The glasses, described in New Scientist magazine, were developed by a team at the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.
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