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Smart Paint: Electronic Power System Surfaces
Moving displays on bottles or other surfaces using cheap injection molding technology is under development at the University of Warwick in the U.K.
According to Professor Gordon Smith, at the Warwick Innovative Manufacturing Research Center:
"This technology opens up a wealth of possibilities, plastic drink bottles could have moving displays created as an integral part of the bottle - or instead of tracking products by hiding RFID tags in them the whole product or a major plastic component of it could effectively be turned into a giant impossible to remove tag."
A grant of £300,000 will provide graduate students with an opportunity to develop this technology, which places a thin film of electronically active surface on plastic components as they are manufactured.
An electronically active surface would be just the thing for the choice enabled packaging technology demonstrated in the Ipifini Programmable Liquid Containers. You pick the button and determine the flavor of your drink after you buy it. Now, the label can reflect the button you picked.
(Ipifini's Choice-Enabled Packaging - programmable soda)
Presumably, this could also be used to print large plastic film newspapers like the e-paper newspapers shown off in Spielberg's 2002 version of PKD's Minority Report.
(Minority Report E-Paper Newspaper)
From Research Programme Seeks Postgraduates to Paint Power Onto Plastics via Frolix-8 and io9.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/5/2008)
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