The connected fridge was for a long time seen as a joke, but companies like Philips are, with the help of smartphones and tablets, looking to resurrect the concept of connected kitchen appliances in various ways.
At the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin this week, Philips is demonstrating a number of concept devices, including a cooker and a coffee maker,to which users communicate with their smartphones.
By using Wi-Fi to connect the HomeCooker Next, users can choose a recipe and the appliance will know how to make it by stirring, changing the temperature and managing the cooking time, according to Philips executive vice president Pieter Nota. All users have to do, if Philips can turn the concept into a real product, is add the ingredients. Hopefully the company will include security measures to prevent hackers from burning your risotto.
The coffee maker concept works along similar lines; users can choose from a number of recipes in an app and then communicate what they want with the coffee maker using Bluetooth. Philips is also showing an air purifier with Wi-Fi that users can control remotely.
The products are still only concepts and Nota didn’t give any hints about when such devices will go on sale.
In addition to becoming connected, kitchen appliances will become voice-controlled in the not-too-distant future. The latter is expected to happen in Europe in the next one or two years, according to Panasonic.
