Sensi-Plate team wins Platinum Award

27 Apr 2018     By Katie Ballue

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln Sensi-Plate Design Studio team received a Platinum Project Award for most valuable senior design project at the Jeffrey S. Raikes School of Computer Science and Management’s annual Design Studio Showcase on April 27, 2018.

The NU-SensiPlate™ is a “next generation real-time dietary intake measurement and analysis tool” that can communicate via Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technology to storage on a device or in the cloud. The plate can calculate nutritional values of food and interface with smartphones and other smart devices in order to monitor, measure, and store food intake across distance.

The NU-SensiPlate™ is part of a much larger project created by Dipti Dev, Assistant Professor in the Department of Child, Youth, and Family Studies and Child Health Behaviors Extension Specialist, that includes the development of the Ecological Approach to (EAT) Family Style Dining curriculum as well as the implementation of this curriculum and coaching for childcare providers by Nebraska Extension educators across the state. Through a USDA grant, Dev has partnered with the College of Engineering and the Raikes School of Computer Science to develop the Sensi-Plate.

The device electronically measures food intake in a way that makes information easily accessible to both childcare providers and parents through an app. Each section of the plate follows the national recommendations for each food category (grains, fruits, vegetables, protein, dairy) and The Design Studio was brought in to develop a prototype. They used 3D printing technology to create a working model based on the USDA MyPlate recommended food groups.

While collecting data and sending it to smart devices, the system will also collect data into a Nutrition Data System for Research (NDSR) Server that will aid in further research and adaptation to the larger project. Eventually, the hope is that both the EAT Family Style Dining curriculum and the NU-SensiPlate™ will be used in tandem nationwide.

The Design Studio student team working on the Sensi-Plate includes Bryce Andresen, Skyler Davis, Lexi Bu, Nina Has, and Sam Conner.