What is Smart Fridge Anyway?
Smart Fridge, Source: The Verge
First of all, let’s define what a smart fridge is. A smart fridge, according to Wikipedia, is a fridge that’s able to communicate through the internet. And one of its main features is the ability to determine when the food needs to be replenished.
The next question is how does the smart fridge know what is inside them? According to Delighted Cooking, there are two ways, either by reading the RFID tag of the product or by the user's manual input. Right now, not many products have RFID tags attached to them, so it would be mainly dependent on user input.
I am going to speak hypothetically since I never use a smart fridge myself. One day I bought chocolate cake, strawberry cheesecake, and sponge cake. Then I would enter each item as a whole. Assuming that smart fridges are not equipped with image processing, at night I take the three of them, cut out ⅛ of each, and put it back in. Then I would need to input what I put inside. Should I then insert them as a whole, or as ⅞ each? You know, it doesn’t matter. Unless you have some sort of food rivalry going on, these data would serve no purpose. Maybe we should just omit the data input since it does not matter even if we run out of it. Of course for essential items like eggs, vegetables, and the like, this function would still be useful. And also, as I said in the beginning, I was assuming that the smart fridge is not equipped with image processing. If it was, then it would be a very good function, since ⅞ cake isn’t going to be significantly different than the whole one, and it would apply to other things like vegetables or packaged dishes.
Current Smart Fridge Features
I have talked about the main function. Other than that, what does the smart fridge have to offer? According to what I found in Lifewire, most smart fridges are equipped with these functions below.
Creating grocery lists synced to smartphones in real-time.
Setting expiration dates and sending notifications to use food while it's fresh.
Coordinating schedules for every member of the family.
Looking up recipes and reading the cooking steps.
Uploading photos for display.
Creating individual profiles for each family member to send them personal notes and to-do lists.
A whiteboard option to leave messages for the family.
Casting from a smart TV in another room to watch from the kitchen.
Customize temperature by drawer or compartment.
Use of interior cameras while at the store to double-check if users are low on milk or eggs.
Sending alert when the water filter needs to be changed.
Turn the ice maker on or off from your smartphone.
Transparent touch screens enable users to look inside the fridge without opening the door.
Number 1 and number 2 are obviously the main functions, and I think it’s pretty obvious how they would work. Setting a threshold on an item, constantly updating its amount, and when it falls below that, send a notification. As for number 3 to number 8, I don’t think it’s really an appealing feature to have. Especially number 8, I don’t think there are people who chop things, fry things, in front of the fridge. If I really wanted to watch something I would put it right in front of me, watching it with a tablet or mobile phone.
As for number 9, temperature control is a really great function to have. Sometimes people want something to just keep slightly cold, and some at freezing temperature, so, yeah, it’s great. Number 10 to 12 are good features, I think it’s useful. As for the last one, number 13, I did some research on the design of a fridge with a transparent, touch screen display and it was only half of one side door frame. I imagine the transparency would not help much. It’s better to just open the door.
What do People Expect from a Fridge?
Chest Freezer
I have experience handling a big chest-type freezer and the most difficult part of using it is organizing the item inside. To take one item out, I needed to move a lot of other things, and just finding where the item is, is already a hassle. However, taking it with a grain of doubt that maybe it's the only chest-type one that’s difficult to use, I tried to do some research. Fortunately, I was able to find proof that organizing a fridge or freezer is really cumbersome. It was an episode of Kitchen Nightmare. In that restaurant, there was a walk-in fridge, where a lot of things had already gone bad. It was disorganized and littered with a lot of miscellaneous things.
Walk-in Fridge
What I’m trying to propose is why not just make the machine do the organizing? There would be a side door for things going in and going out. Put a weight sensor there, so the weight of the item can be known and when the machine does the organizing it won’t crush the below item with another heavier item. The big door would still be needed though, for when deep cleaning needs to be done. It also facilitates a manual pickup in the case of power failure or mechanical failure. The smartphone connected to it would have a simple representation of how the item is organized and so can take the item manually with ease.
And then for the pick-up system, the fridge system will be connected to the smartphone, and from the phone, we can choose what we are going to take. And for the same item, we can pick to take the item from the available date. So for the same item, if it’s sent inside on a different date, it would be separated. And then, after taking for example part of the meat, half a kilogram out of a kilogram, then the system would update the weight according to what the weight sensor senses. It’s also good if the system can separate cooked items from raw items.
Next, we need to overcome this problem. How to implement these organizing mechanisms? First, the mechanism should not be too big and affect the available spacers in the fridge. Second, it needs to be able to withstand cold temperatures. It would be a disaster if the machine broke because of the ice frost. Third, the allocation of spaces should be dynamic, not fixed, since the items are of different sizes and shapes.
One of my ideas is to use electrorheological fluids (ER fluids) which are used in the field of soft robotics. ER fluids change their viscosity when exposed to external electrical fields. Which means it could change from languid to stiff. According to data provided by the journal “A Review on Electrorheological (ER) Fluids and its Applications”, ER fluids can have dynamic yield stress from 100 Pa to 3 KPa at 4 kV/mm range. I think it should be enough for most items in the freezer. I was quite worried since a freezer has a temperature of around -18 degrees celsius, and the ER fluid would freeze. According to the data in the journal, thankfully ER fluids seem to be able to operate up to -25 degrees celsius. As for the mechanism, I think the cradle form would be good. Since ER fluids make the mechanism flexible, during the retrievement the ‘hands’ would slip in-between spaces, and then pull up the item. If the item is below another item, then the mechanism would move the things around to facilitate the retrieval. I don’t know if this idea is feasible, but I hope automatic organization for smart fridges could be realized in the future.
