Carrots and cookies not only taste different. They make distinct sounds when you chew them.
This may seem trivial, but it is helping create a library that catalogs the unique sounds that foods make as we bite, grind, and swallow them.
The library will be part of a software package supporting AutoDietary, a food-tracking necklace similar to Fitbit and other wearable devices. Only instead of tracking burned calories, it will monitor caloric intake—or what we eat.
“There is no shortage of wearable devices that tell us how many calories we burn, but creating a device that reliably measures caloric intake isn’t so easy,” says Wenyao Xu, assistant professor of computer science at the University at Buffalo’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
The device wraps around the back of the neck like a choker necklace. A tiny high-fidelity microphone—about the size of a zipper pull—records the sounds made during chewing and as the food is swallowed. The data is then sent to a smartphone via Bluetooth, where food types are recognized.
