Clip Boston Globe With new toilet seat, BU and MIT engineers want to nip bathroom mishaps in the bud (June 18)

Boston Globe reporter Hiawatha Bray spotlights Cleana, a startup launched by engineers from MIT and BU that is developing “a new kind of toilet seat that raises or lowers itself to avoid unwelcome splashes, or to prevent objects from falling accidentally into the bowl.” Bray explains that “the company’s engineers created a semi-automatic seat that must first be raised or lowered by the user. This action powers up a pneumatic system with a built-in timer that waits about 30 seconds and then raises or lowers the seat, depending on the application.”