Internet Fridges: State of the Market
The Internet fridge is probably the most oft-quoted example of what the Internet of Things - when everyday objects are connected to the Internet - will enable. Imagine a refrigerator (so the story goes) that monitors the food inside it and notifies you when you're low on, for example, milk. It also perhaps monitors all of the best food websites, gathering recipes for your dinners and adding the ingredients automatically to your shopping list. This fridge knows what kinds of foods you like to eat, based on the ratings you have given to your dinners. Indeed the fridge helps you take care of your health, because it knows which foods are good for you and which clash with medical conditions you have. And that's just part of the sci-fi story of the Internet fridge.
This type of 'smart home' fridge has actually been attempted before, in the dot com era, and flopped. Has there been much progress since then in the Internet fridge market? Let's find out.
This is What We Want...
This video shows a prototype of a fridge that uses RFID tags to automatically notify you when milk needs to be bought. Designer Kim Otto took a Siemens refrigerator and replaced the existing flat screen with a touch screen panel PC, then added an RFID tag reader.
...But, Let's Tack a Computer and TV onto The Fridge For Now
The reality is less exciting than what Otto presented. It turns out that the appliance market isn't quite ready for internet fridges that go beyond mere entertainment.
The Electrolux Cyber fridge was released in 2006 and it pretty much sums up the current state of the market for Internet fridges. As the Appliancist website noted: "The Screenfridge is equipped with a computer and a touch screen so you can surf the Internet, send e-mails and buy and order food for your home without leaving the kitchen [...]"
In other words, it's just a computer tacked onto a fridge. No automation, no RFID tags, none of the 'Internet of Things' functionality we're all looking forward to.
Samsung's Wireless ICE Pad refrigerator is another of this ilk. Its main feature is a detachable LCD touch pad computer. It also features an "entertainment center" (i.e. a TV); along with a calendar, scheduler, message board for "smart food management."
The most recent I found was reviewed by Webware earlier this year: a fridge by Whirlpool featuring a detachable tablet computer made by Data Evolution.
It's not just computers and TVs being tacked onto fridges either. Last year Gorenje released a "Made for iPod" refrigerator, which as the name suggests is a fridge with an iPod on it. The fridge freezer features an iPod docking station, wireless LAN for Internet connection, and built-in speakers. One of the suggested use cases is watching video recipes.
Wait, There Are Some Good Uses for Internet Fridges
Perhaps the most interesting innovation we're seeing with Internet-connected fridges right now are ones that use Web technology to save power and optimize themselves.
A good example is GE's demand-response refrigerator, which can adjust its settings and reduce power consumption based on pricing signals from the electricity company. As Greentech Media reported earlier this month, GE has partnered with energy technology company Tendril to "develop algorithms and other technology that will essentially allow utilities employing Tendril's TREE platform [Tendril Residential Energy Ecosystem] to turn GE [...] appliances off or on to curb power consumption." This is done either via the Internet or special sensor meters. It's estimated that demand-response systems like this save between 10-30% in electricity consumption in homes.
The Time is Still Nigh
Clearly the age of the Internet fridge hasn't yet arrived. Adding computers and TVs to fridges has been tried by many of the main fridge manufacturers, but those efforts were half baked.
Until RFID tags that connect to the cloud become more common place on food items, the Internet fridge is yet another product looking for a solution. We'll check back in a couple of years!
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I wonder how you save energy on a fridge, when the basic idea is that you want to keep stuff at a stable, never-changing temperature.
If the thermostat says "turn the compressor on, it's getting hot", what kind of algorithm can save energy here ... ?!
I wonder how much the carriers are going to charge for data usage.
There will be no "internet 'fridges" until the food/grocery industry adopts RFID...
...and they'll never add RFID chips to each store's item ( replacing or augmenting the bar code ) because that would eliminate the need for the archaic check line as wee know it, since we'd be able to just push the entire cart through the reader and instantly have the total price of all items.
...grocery chains make a fortune by making us stand there in line, waiting to have each item the the cart scanned *one-one-one, by hand", from advertising, impulse buy items, getting our personal data out of our credit cards and re-selling it to junk mailers, etc.
A little research/investigative journalism on the big food chain's resistance to RFID would have been nice!
Todd, I both agree and disagree with you. Yup, you're correct, that RFID is an important advancement, but I think you're off base with the slam.
As a point in fact, the entire food industry has made significant progress toward RFID over the past 10 years. For more information, I suggest you visit the Grocery Manufacturers Association site or the Food Marketing Institute site or other relevant associations.
RFID requires a significant investment throughout the food chain, from farm to fork. It requires new universal coding -- that must be agreed upon at least on a national basis and not just a retail chain by chain basis -- if not on an international basis. Then it requires advancement of the technology so the chips are cost effective and don't add more than a penny to the price of the good. As recently as a few years ago, the chips were large, unwieldy and cost a dollar PER CHIP.
Then there is the problem of water resistance. And what about reuse? Or whether they can be recycled?
Lots of factors. Patience. RFID is coming.
This is what I like to call lazy technology. You should know if you're running low on milk if you actually do use it often. As far as recipe and nutritional values goes...I think it might just be easier to have a nice small tablet PC or a projected small screen (some future) on your counter where you can scan barcodes and look up an item and give you the information.
Also add some program where you give it a few ingredients and tells you what you can make out of it.
So far the "Internet Fridge" is a failure because it doesn't bring much to the plate.
@Todd Too
Point of my comment in the context of this post, especially the "What we want" paragraph: No RFID on items from grocery store = no "inter 'fridge"
aka "cart before the horse".
Todd, that's precisely what my conclusion was, ref last paragraph:
"Until RFID tags that connect to the cloud become more common place on food items, the Internet fridge is yet another product looking for a solution. We'll check back in a couple of years!"
'Todd, Too' excellent info, thanks for that.
IP-enabled refrigerators can serve us in a far more important way than automatically ordering milk for us --
-- as it should be with *any* household appliance, refrigerators should be connected to the 'net (of the inter or intra variety) to provide us with intelligent electricity usage throttling and reporting.
Another benefit of an internet refrigerator might be notifications: an sms or email to a mobile device when the humidity goes up too high, when air circulation is inadequate, when the fridge door is open, or when your college kid's fridge is just, well, empty. (The last one can be accomplished with low-intensity lasers, image recognition or weight sensors...)
Ooooh, making an internet fridge sounds fun!
@LGE and @Samsung... I'm here in Korea if you want me to romp around your product dev labs. I won't charge you a penny, just stay out of my way! ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
David, some excellent ideas there. That sounds like a pretty good deal for LGE and Samsung, for their sakes I hope they're reading ;-)
What about the stuff you don't keep in your fridge? How can an internet fridge tell me how much pasta, lentil, rice I have? What if I decide to keep my onions and potatoes in a basket outside of the fridge, as you should do with vegetables anyway?
I like the idea of the internet fridge being able to regulate itself (temperature needs change depending on how full the fridge is) and to do this in conjunction with data from the electricity company. And video recipes being played right in the door is awesome and will allow me to remove the laptop from the kitchen and possibly preserve my keyboard a bit longer in the process - the trackpad's basically gone from having spices spilled on it. But I don't need my fridge to tell me things I already know, like whether there's milk inside. I mean, it holds all of 20 cubic feet, right? Not too far to look.
Technology is great, but it shouldn't make us stupid.