The model in the photo reclines on a trendy, modern lawn chair, soaking up the sun, a Tablet PC at her side. She appears to be cooking dinner via a home computer network while catching some rays.
“Say ‘Hello’ to the kitchen of the future,” says the Internet Home Alliance on its Web page. The intelligent home, filled with “smart” appliances, is no longer just science fiction. The first generation of such devices for the kitchen and other parts of the home is in stores today.
Research for the next wave of products is being done by the Internet Home Alliance, a consortium that includes IBM, Microsoft, Panasonic and other major corporations. Other companies are developing similar kinds of devices.
These products, a year or more away, will include more networked devices, which can connect with each other and with the Internet. Among them is the remote-controlled oven.
Smart appliances are traditional home accessories – blenders, refrigerators, even alarm clocks – enhanced with computer chips to enable new features.
Many of the devices available today are smart, but solitary. They cannot communicate with other smart appliances.
Appliances with enhanced IQs that are on the market now include:
– Washing machines and dryers from several manufacturers that use computer processors and other innovations to simplify laundry day, conserve water and electricity, and reduce wear and tear on clothing.
– The $80 Oster In2itive blender, which knows how long and fast to run to turn a pitcher of ice and other ingredients into a precision batch of margaritas.
– A new kitchen range by Whirlpool can refrigerate uncooked lasagna while you’re at work, then turn itself on and have the mozzarella bubbling when you pull in the driveway.
– The Roomba vacuum cleaner from iRobot spins around a room, slipping under furniture in pursuit of dirt.
– Several companies have produced Internet refrigerators – home computing hubs complete with touch-screen monitors to access news, e-mail or recipes and assist with shopping lists and sometimes the shopping itself, using the Internet. A common sales pitch is that busy mothers can monitor a sleeping baby via a Web cam while keeping an eye on the souffle.
– Salton is scheduled to start selling its Beyond Connected Home appliances by June, including an alarm clock/Internet hub that can download and display news, stock prices and other information. The clock also can remind you if you forgot to put water in the networked coffee pot as you’re getting ready for bed. The system’s microwave can scan the bar code on a frozen pizza and figure out how long to heat the snack. If the information isn’t in its database, it can use the alarm clock’s Internet connection to download the data.
While such a sci-fi kitchen will soon be feasible, industry experts say it will take years before the products become widespread.
“The smart-appliance market has been growing very slowly,” said Cindy McCurley, an analyst with market research firm In-Stat MDR. “Various companies have introduced prototypes, but most have not sold in mass quantities, if (they have) reached the market at all.”
Many of the first smart appliances will sell mainly to a niche market of affluent homeowners who want the status of having the highest-tech kitchen on the block, McCurley said.
“Some of these products have quite a hefty price,” she said. “That’s a big thing. Eight thousand dollars for a smart refrigerator is pretty steep.”
THE POLARA
It is possible today to lounge on lawn furniture and control a Whirlpool Polara smart oven, at least for 20 households in a Boston study by the Internet Home Alliance.
Participants in the six-month program received a prototype Polara appliance, which can be controlled using the Internet. The current retail version, with a suggested price of about $1,800, doesn’t have an Internet connection.
The families in the study also received a prototype Whirlpool Internet refrigerator, with a Tablet PC, a touch-screen laptop that can be used without a keyboard.
The family chef can use it to call up a recipe, theoretically from a lawn chair, and click on any ingredients not currently in the kitchen’s shelves. The fridge can then order those ingredients from Peapod, an online grocer.
The appliance also can be controlled by the Tablet PC. While many of the networked appliances available to study participants are not yet offered to the general public, several stand-alone smart products are.
Tim Woods, Internet Home Alliance vice president, says it makes sense to first increase the functions in familiar household items, then to add more features by linking them together and to the Internet.
“It’s an evolutionary process,” he said. “In the tech boom, we tried to add technology for technology’s sake. We tried to take consumers someplace they didn’t want to go. The last thing you want to do is to try and make consumers change their behavior.”
The Polara smart oven is an example of that evolutionary process, Woods said.
“In the first version, you put in your chicken au vin, tell it you want dinner at 6:30 and walk away.”
Down the road, as people get used to that concept, Whirlpool may connect the appliance to the Internet.
“Sometimes you get stuck in traffic and you know you’re not going to get home at 6:30,” Woods said. “Life happens. Your schedule changes. You would be able to call your oven and tell it you really want dinner at 7:30.”
Woods agrees that consumers are not likely to take to smart appliances as quickly as they did to DVD players, which in only a few years have made the VCR nearly obsolete.
He hopes sales will be like those of wireless home networks, which are selling well, but are still below true mass-market volumes.
“We’re aiming for that early mass market, more than just the early adopters,” he said.
Woods expects that in the next two or three years, sales will pick up with new-home buyers. Within five years, that trend should spread to existing homes, he said.
IN THE WASH
Smart appliances aren’t just in the kitchen. Someday clothes could come with tiny, inexpensive radio ID tags sewn in them. When you drop a silk shirt in the washer, it would know what detergent to use and how to wash it.
But manufacturers aren’t waiting for that day to start making laundry systems smarter.
Several systems now on the market use processors linked to energy-saving variable speed motors to offer options for up to 15 types of fabrics.
General Electric, for example, boasts that its Harmony Clothes Care System is the first in which the washer and dryer exchange information. Tell the washer that you have a load of jeans, and the dryer already knows what settings to use when you put in the clothes.
However, at $2,000 for the pair, the system will be out of harmony with many family budgets.
Appliance manufacturer Salton thinks the timing is right for a network of home appliances – if they are affordable.
“Most smart appliances are still for a very elite community,” said Salton spokeswoman Nina Cordova. “They’re very expensive systems and are out of reach of middle-income America.”
Salton plans to change that with its Beyond Connected Home network. Only one component in the system costs more than $150 – the alarm-clock hub, priced at $500.
The hub has an Internet-capable computer equivalent to a personal digital assistant. It also has a built-in radio/CD player.
The clock will communicate with the system’s microwave and bread maker ($150 each), and with Salton’s $79 coffee maker.
The company also offers a flip-screen hub for the kitchen, a touch-screen panel that tilts under a cabinet to clear counter space when not in use. The Internet computer includes a television tuner and a DVD player.
Cordova said the time is right for its version of the kitchen of the future.
“We’ve done a lot of research,” she said. “People want entertainment in the kitchen; they want to read their e-mail. We learned there’s a market for products that will simplify people’s lives.”
From Wilson County News