This 'Smart Toilet' Will Be Able to Identify Users By Their Buttholes

Philip Ellis

April 16, 2020 10:45 AM

A team of researchers at Stanford University have published a paper in Nature Biomedical Engineering outlining the design for a "smart toilet" which will be able to identify users by their individual "analprint." That's right; your butthole is just as unique as you always thought.

This 'Smart Toilet' Identifies You By Your Butt

The purpose of the "precision health" design is to aid in detection of diseases; the toilet is equipped with sensors capable of spotting a range of disease markers in urine and stool samples, including several kinds of cancer. Urine is subjected to physical and molecular analysis, while stools are analyzed by physical characteristics.

"Our concept dates back well over 15 years," says Professor Sanjiv Gambhir, senior author of the paper. "When I'd bring it up, people would sort of laugh because it seemed like an interesting idea, but also a bit odd."

Gambhir compares the smart toilet to other self-monitoring devices already in popular use, including fitness trackers like the Apple Watch or Fitbit . "The thing about a smart toilet, though, is that unlike wearables, you can't take it off," he says. "Everyone uses the bathroom there's really no avoiding it and that enhances its value as a disease-detecting device."

In order to provide the most accurate and useful insights on the user's health data, feedback will be individualized. "We needed to make sure the toilet could discern between users... To do so, we made a flush lever that reads fingerprints," Gambhir says. But the team also went one better, and incorporated some highly sophisticated booty-recognition technology. "We know it seems weird," he adds, "but as it turns out, your anal print is unique."

Don't worry, you won't need to purchase and install a brand new toilet in your bathroom in order to reap the benefits; the smart sensors are encased in a unit which can be easily attached to a regular toilet bowl. "It's sort of like buying a bidet add-on that can be mounted right into your existing toilet," Gambhir explains. "And like a bidet, it has little extensions that carry out different purposes."

Philip Ellis