We all knew there would be a day when none of us would be secure even in the most private places. Well, AI has certainly taken care of that because scientists have discovered a way to track your time even when you are using the toilet.

A prototype for smart toilets has been introduced by the researchers at Stanford University that would be able to recognize you by your anal print and track all your trips to the lavatory. The toilet contains cameras and sensors that can gather data from our bodily waste that will then be used to detect any possible issues.

Source: The Verge

The ‘anal print” would be used to identify each user and this is the aspect that has received the most attention from the users ever since the idea was published in a press release and the Journal of Nature Biomedical Engineering on Monday.

“It’s a minor part of our system,” Seung-min Park, a senior research scientist at Stanford University and the paper’s lead author, told The Verge.

According to Park’s blog post, the idea was first presented by Salvador Dali as he realized that “the anus has 35 or 37 creases, which are as unique as fingerprints.” So when it is available in the market, you can simply attach this prototype device to the standard toilets. It uses a Raspberry Pi device with a camera so that every user can be identified by their respective anal print.

 As reported by Park, the actual data collection begins when the person sits down. Inside the toilet, there are cameras to capture images of the person and their waste, motion sensors to detect urine streams, and medical sensors to analyze what’s inside the excrement. To make the whole procedure more effective, it also uses a fingerprint sensor on the lever so that identity can easily be related to each person.

 In the first attempt, the smart toilet was able to gather urine and stool samples. An algorithm called “urodynamics” was used which provided details about the flow rate, magnitude, and stream time of each participant’s urine and then compared it to the data available.  

Source; The Verge

This study determines the difference in patterns between the users of the smart toilet and the data collected from a healthy body waste. The sensor contains many modules to measure molecular features in urine such as white blood cell count and protein levels that can give indications about any sort of bladder infection.

Participants’ stool was also classified using the “Bristol Stool Form Scale,” which sorts people’s excrement into seven distinctive classes from “hard lumps” to “watery.” Along with this, the toilet also determines the amount of time any individual takes to eliminate bodily waste.

Even though, right now the first prototype can only determine constipation and infections, scientists eventually want smart toilets to detect problems as severe as colon cancer. The data and images collected from the device will remain private and therefore an encrypted cloud server for storage has been created.

The intention of the smart toilet is not to replace doctors or provide an official diagnosis, Sam Gambhir, chair of the radiology department at Stanford University and the senior author of the research paper, said. In fact, they are trying to make the healthcare departments more and more efficient.