Playing with your food: Projecting your cake and eating it too

Disney’s plan for ‘interactive cakes’ revealed in patent application:

Mmm, cake — no other confectionery can match its range, be it in the form of birthday, wedding, or bundt. But we never expected to see it integrated with a pico projector. Yet that’s exactly what the imagineers at Disney seem to be planning according to a US patent application lovingly titled “Projector systems and methods for producing digitally augmented interactive cakes and other food products.” The application includes a set of hilarious illustrations depicting over-sized cameras projecting images and video onto the surface of baked goods in order to promote storytelling and / or interactivity that is unique and individualized. Disney envisions images mapped to the 3D topography of the cake allowing it to sense, for example, when a slice is in the process of being cut (initiating a sword fight with Captain Hook) or removed (water rushes in to fill the void). While we doubt that you’ll find these in the aisles of your local Best Buy grocer anytime soon, you might want to check for availability the next time that you book a birthday party at a Disneyland resort…

It’s like a much (ahem) sweeter version of the projects SandScape and Illuminating Clay where interaction with a physical surface is simultaneously the input to a video system and its output.

See the link at the very beginning of this post or the original source for more details on Disney’s interactive cake technology concept including discussion of coded utensils to trigger events, a gallery of illustrations, and the original patent application.