Wired Kitchen, Cooking with Computers
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Imagine the bizarre kitchen designed by computer geeks. There are no dishes at all, but a touch screen offers to fabricate bowls for you. Projectors indicate what items are where, and they can help you control appliances. And the refrigerator tracks which foods are going bad, finds recipes for you, plays music and video, and can send shopping lists to your cell phone.
While my idea of a smart kitchen might involve putting Papa Johns on speed dial, researchers have some much more inspired models. They start with two visions: making everything as simple as possible and wasting as little as possible. So let’s look around a futuristic kitchen, created from the combined imaginations of people all over the world: MIT’s Counter Intelligence Project, Sharp, LG Technologies, and others.
As you walk into the futuristic kitchen, you may notice a screen in the fridge and projections on the counters. There are a variety of intelligences that can be added to your kitchen. One company so far, LG, is selling internet refrigerators. Researchers have more in their scope, but the internet fridge is a start. It features a 15 inch LCD touch screen, which can play movies or music to entertain you while cooking. It also has a cooking database, and can browse the net for recipes and other useful items. The screen can also hold memos, so you don’t need to post things to the door with magnets. It makes maintenance easy, according to LG: “Refrigerator checks for equipment errors real-time and informs users about any problems via e-mail. If necessary, it provides cyber service call by guiding you to a nearest service center.”
While DSL-rigged refrigerators may seem a bit weird, they are only an early step that may prove how commercial a techie kitchen is.
Next: Electronically Tracking the Leftovers >>
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