During yesterday morning's survey of tech news, I came across a Gizmodo post on a "smart" fridge that is trending on digg.com.

A smart fridge as a concept is not new. The advent of self identifying RFID (radio frequency identification) chips was supposed to produce new innovations in supply chain management from real-time purchasing at storefronts to warehouses that inventory themselves. According to the hype, RFID tagged groceries were suppose to allow people to have intelligent fridges that could keep an inventory of what food they had, what products are going bad, and what they should pickup on their next trip to the store. Some designs even mentioned e-mailing a local grocery store to pre-order food. As someone who frequents farmers' markets, local bakeries, and small family-owned ethnic grocery stores, good luck with that!

Designer Ashley Legg of Yanko Design (the same design group that tried to engineer multi-tasking kitchen knives) decided to move forward on the smart fridge concept, without RFID. Though, her design no doubt has the scalability to add a UPC reader or RFID capabilities. At least, that is my hope...

Legg's Smart Fridge is apparently meant to encourage non-cooks or rarely-cook cooks to cook, potentially a high tech step in Jamie Oliver's food revolution. Assuming the groceries you purchase are themselves healthy and not too processed, the fridge comes up with a recipe based on what it thinks it has on its shelves. It will then guide you in preparing the dish, literally spoon-feeding you instructions. The one string attached: You have to tell the fridge what food you buy, how much of it you purchased, and ultimately how much you use.

Equipped with a bottom-drawer freezer and a door with an embedded touch screen, the concept is somewhat sound. I worry about four potential issues. Firstly, there is the tedium that comes with managing the fridge's inventory yourself. Secondly, the fridge may not be equipped with sensors to detect when food is going bad or facilities to tell when products are past their use-by dates. Thirdly, will the fridge be able to account for necessary ingredients in the pantry? Fifthly, does this mean people will start randomly buying groceries without fore-thought? Does anyone else meal-plan?

Still, I would love to be part of the quality assurance team, helping to refine the fridge's software. Here is what I think the test plans would produce at first:

Test 1: Can of opened ancho chiles, ketchup, mustard, and beer
Fridge Response: "Are you serious!?!? Condiments are not a food group. Go shopping frat boy!"

Test 2: baby spinach, 2 lb bag of carrots, 4 clementines, bunch of parsley, bunch of celery, a carton of a dozen eggs
Fridge Response: "Well, you've the makings of a classic mandarin orange baby spinach salad. Swap out the orange for vinegar, add a poached egg, and you've a light dinner, but you'd better get yourself back to the grocery store. Go pick up some milk before your spouse gets home."

Test 3: pre-sliced salami, 4 rib steaks, beef tenderloin roast, family-sized pack of center-cut pork chops, 4 pepperettes
Fridge Response: "Um, you may want to consider a little veg unless you plan on feeding a saber tooth tiger.

Test 4: Brick
Fridge Response: "Ew ew ew...What the heck is that? So going to pretend you never bought that.

Test 5: Take-out Chinese Food
Fridge Response: " Take-out again?!?! Don't you love me? You and I gotta have a serious sit-down. Least you could do is check out your local food blogs for some decent Chinese food."

Test 6: Empty
Fridge Response: "Alright, I'm calling the local pizza place. There's a 2-for-1 deal at a local pizzeria. Would you like anchovies?"

Test 7: Filled to the brim with random groceries from celery root to ring pops.
Fridge Response: "I think you broke the touch screen entering all this stuff in. Some of it doesn't need refrigeration. Why are you refrigerating bread? Anyways, I have no clue what to make. Gimme a sec! I'm dropping Martha Stewart a tweet."



Bookmark with:

Tag(s):