Scientists are cooking up new devices to make your kitchen more efficient - and more fun
Matt Mason has seen the future - and it’s fun. As director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in the US, Mason likes thinking about how machines could make our lives easier by doing the tasks we hate, such as cleaning. When it comes to kitchen, he’s confident that within a few decades, robots will be doing most of the boring work, freeing us to relax.
“We think of the kitchen as a place for chores,” says Mason. “But we’re in the process of discovering it as a place we can enjoy.”
So unless you really love to clean, you won’t have to. And the revolution has already begun: the iRobot company has given us the Roomba robotic vacuum, and recently unveiled the Scooba, which vacuums, wet-scrubs and dries hard floors all at once.
Robotic floor cleaners of the future could take different forms, says Dan Kara of Robotics Trends, which tracks developments in automation. He envisions a hard-floor cleaning system that’s built into the wall; it would blow debris to a part of a room where it would be sucked up by a vacuum. Then the system would spray the floor with cleaner, and an arm would mop it up. “This is sheer speculations, of course,” Kara explains, “but you could program it to come on at 3 a.m., and it would just wet-mop the floor for you.”
Ecokitchens
More than just fun, future kitchens will be environmentally friendly. Bruce Beihoff, director of Corporate Innovation and Technology at Whirlpool, foresees appliance systems that recycle energy lost from your oven to heat the kitchen, your water, even the entire room. “We have things like this running in our labs today,” he says.
Your dirty dishwater could also be reused. “It could be sanitise and recycled through a filter.”
The Joy of Cooking
New culinary technologies will also make you look smarter in the kitchen. The best cooks know that an evenly heated skillet is crucial to the perfect sauté: enter Whirlpool’s experiment stovetop, the “powdered bed”. Using microwave-heated ceramic chips instead of an electric element or gas, the system heats pans with near-perfect balance and temperature
control. “It gives you extremely even heating,” says Bruce Beihoff. “Maybe ten or 20 times better than the best pan you can buy today.”
Researchers at Whirlpool are also testing an oven that will let you roast a skinless chicken to crispy perfection. “You’d still get the beautiful aesthetics in taste and appearance,” says Beihoff, “but you’d be able to cut back on fat.”
Paul Leuthe of Wolf Appliance Company believes that induction stovetops will be de riguer. They use a magnetic field to heat up pans, bringing water to the boil in half the time it takes now, and also allowing for slow cooking.
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