NEW DIGI MEASURING CUP.. Making the kitchen a SMART kitchen.

The SMART Kitchen… A digital measuring cup.  A fridge that tells you what food you need and then orders it from the organic grocery store around the block.  A coffee maker powered by the sun.  This is your future home full of automation, intelligent and technology driven appliances that need no more than an electrical outlet (or a rechargeable battery).  As highly advanced, green, and sustainable technology scales down in size and lowers in price we will see it more and more in our daily lives.  The kitchen is a place where technology can not only help out, but make things safer as well. It can ensure that an elderly person gets the food they need, or keep food cleaner with odor and freshness sensors. It will be able to do all this for a fraction of the energy and water needed now. Imagine an entire kitchen that cleans itself, without even having to load the dishes…

I found this article on the new technologies website gizmodo.com.  Gizmodo.com is a website that blogs about the weirdest, wackiest, newest technologies of the current and future.  It was a short introduction to a “smart measuring cup” in which the measuring cup gave liquid amount digitally in US units or metric units and the type of liquid.

In 2007, a Denmark Innovation Lab redesigned a Siemen’s refrigerator to talk, even remotely over the internet. If you type a recipe into the fridge, it will inform you of the ingredients you need.  It will tell you what contents are used up and what you need to replace.  The fridge is the future but there’s more large appliances that could use a makeover.

What else could you redesign in the kitchen to make it “smart”?  What about creating a frying pan that, on initial set up registered what kind of stove you have, gas or electric and its average heat temperature.  From personal experience, I know gas stoves typically, are hotter than electric stoves, therefore foods cook faster.  Within this pan, one would be able to tell, type of meat, poultry or fish, size of meat (full size or chopped), and average thickness.  As a result, it would let you know when it’s cooked.  If the meat is a full size porter house steak, it could time when to flip it over.

The other improvement to a counter appliance would be the coffee maker.  Although coffee makers have come a long way, like this Solar Coffee Maker Concept (right) by Gun Ho Lee, I feel there still might be some areas of improvement.  For example, my parents leave for work at different times of the morning, like many Americans, my mother makes coffee for both her and my father but has to use two separate “coffee times”.  What about a coffee maker that allowed two set times to brew?  What about a coffee maker that auto fill your to go cup with the exact amount of cream and sugar every morning.  Although this may be on the brink of laziness, it seems to be where technology, gadgets and gizmos are headed – perhaps this next little bit of automation could be that next threshold.

August 5, 2009

By Jessica Chin