The advancement in technology at such a rapid pace is truly wondrous. With the innovation of new products and services so frequently, the standard of life for humans has remarkably increased over time. Public amenities like communal toilets in China have upgraded this privilege to a new level when they introduced a smart technology that alerts a user when the toilet is too putrid to use.
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Smart toilets
Public toilets are not the best ones to use when you have to go urgently. They have a notorious reputation for being less than hygienic and are often present in a repulsive manner. That being said, not all public toilets are unpleasant, for instance, a mall in Sichuan, a southwestern Chinese province, did something that has never been done before.
According to Metro, Chinese woman recently posted a video on a Chinese social media platform criticising a toilet that detects smells. The toilet has a screen attached outside of it that’s connected to the smell sensors installed inside of it. As soon as a person finishes using the toilet and comes out, the sensors pick up the harshness of the smell and rate it on the screen outside. It then warns the next user and also instructs them to wait for 5 minutes until the smell disappears.
Technology: advanced or invasive?
The woman on the video can be heard ridiculing this toilet system, while simultaneously questioning, whether they truly need this sort of technology or not. The system’s ‘odour index’ certainly seems unnecessary to a lot of people.
The video posted on social media had many comments (in Chinese) making fun of the system, meanwhile also raising concerns about the invasion of the user’s privacy. One of the comments read:
Install a monitor in every toilet to check whether there are cockroaches and mice in the toilet
While the other seemed more worried and said:
Will this spy on you?
Sources used:
-Metro: Public toilet ‘smell sensors’ warn potential visitors if cubicle is too stinky
