Mebbe they could have RFID chips, therefore finally putting to use that thing that every single tech magazine and newsletter is utterly obsessed with every single day.
Well, I assume people don't walk off with the pagers because (a) the pagers won't generally work outside of the restaurant's system, and (b) they make them inconveniently larger than pocket-sized. I imagine the beer mats will suffer from the same problems -- once the novelty has worn off, I can't see too many people taking them as souvenirs.
The pagers have an additional protection -- you don't generally get seated until you give the pager back! So maybe that's why no one walks off with those, and the beer mats would be a different story.
Didn't Crash work on a similar project at MERL? I seem to recall that one of the design criteria was being able to survive repeated washings in an industrial dishwasher.
I believe that Crash's design used special beer mugs and table. When queried, the beer mugs would report back to the table how much liquid was in the mug using capacitance. The info could then be relayed back to the bar/server station for refills.
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2005-09-30 07:46 pm (UTC)Then again, people don't seem to walk off with those beer-mat pagers, so maybe I'm just too cynical.
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Date: 2005-09-30 11:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-01 01:06 am (UTC)The pagers have an additional protection -- you don't generally get seated until you give the pager back! So maybe that's why no one walks off with those, and the beer mats would be a different story.
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Date: 2005-09-30 08:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-30 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-10-01 01:07 am (UTC)(yes, I'm supposed to be working. so?)