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Microsoft Helps Develop Smart, IoT-Enabled Refrigerators (microsoft.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader writes:
Promising "intelligent food management" to help with shopping and meal planning, Microsoft is collaborating with household appliance manufacturer Liebherr to develop a refrigerator where stored groceries "can be monitored using internal cameras." The refrigerators will use Microsoft's object recognition technology to create a list of your groceries -- with photos -- accessible via an an Android or iOS app (or a Windows device).
"Microsoft is providing computer vision capability as part of this collaboration," says their web page, citing the deep-learning technology underlying the Microsoft Cognitive Services Computer Vision API, released in Microsoft's open source Computational Network Toolkit. "Using the deep learning algorithms contained within CNTK, Microsoft data scientists worked with Liebherr to build a new image processing system to detect specific food products present inside a Liebherr refrigerator..."
"Microsoft is providing computer vision capability as part of this collaboration," says their web page, citing the deep-learning technology underlying the Microsoft Cognitive Services Computer Vision API, released in Microsoft's open source Computational Network Toolkit. "Using the deep learning algorithms contained within CNTK, Microsoft data scientists worked with Liebherr to build a new image processing system to detect specific food products present inside a Liebherr refrigerator..."
If I installed this on my fridge I would use the app when I went to the pharmacy. That way I could check up on which antibiotics where already growing in my fridge.
.. designed to get people more used to having cameras and other sensory equipment all around them.
A solution in search of a problem.
#DeleteChrome
Health insurance goes up because you're not eating healthy enough, police have free access to all these cameras to make sure no one's storing drugs in their fridge etc.
Because writing 'Milk' on a list when you take the last carton of milk is such a daunting task!
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
I really need one of these
"Your fridge cannot recognize the ice cream you installed. (R)eboot fridge or (M)elt the ice cream ?"
"Your fridge is 99% full. You can make more space with the Fridge Cleanup Tool. Proceeed ? (Y/N)"
and at the very end:
"I am sorry Dave, you should not eat this."
"Open the fridge door, HAL!"
This would be much easier to do if all the items purchased in a supermarket had some kind of machine-readable label that linked to a database holding the product information and price...
You mean like a bar code that they could scan at the checkout?
Ok .. they don't have image detection. But they do already have a fridge that has a camera to see the inside and a neat Android interface. My wife and I played with one at a local store recently and it was kinda neat. It had a nice whiteboard function to leave notes, supported streaming video and supposedly interfaced with the SmartTVs, although I'm not sure of the functionality. Since it appears to use Android, it was pretty intuitive to us. I don't think it would be to people who haven't used Android phones though.
I don't know how useful image detection will be without several cameras in the back and side of each shelf. But it was interesting to be able to see very clearly what was inside without opening the door. I wonder if the energy cost of the TV screen and computer hardware will outweigh the savings of not opening the door as often or as long.
It wasn't worth to me the extra $2K more a comparable fridge costs. It might be to people with more disposable income than I have.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The same problems apply to parking spaces. People don't want to book, they just want to park.
This is the problem with most Internet of things ideas. They require booking and planning ahead. Imagine when we're all driving Google Cars. we aren't going to just hop in and it will know where we want to go. You'll program every day's trips on your calendar app, and any changes will need to be manually done. This might be great for obsessive compulsive's who have to have a rigidly set schedule, but I might have any of 5 different work destinations, and sometimes don't know until halfway to work. So I'll be spared the inconvenience of making a quick decision with reprogramming on the fly.
Back to the refrigerator, I see the same problem. Instead of the terrible inconvenience of a notepad and pencil, we'll be able to program the thing, then I'll be damned if we won't see advertising when the refrigerator decides we're low on something. Then it'll be just fscking awesome when in a meeting with the director, and my phone alerts me to the milk situation being both low and 1 day away from the expiration date, but before that wants me to watch a commercial for Udderly Awesome Milk, in White, Chocolate or NEW! Hazlenut flavored!!!
There are good uses of technology, Internet connected refrigerators are not.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So would a system freeze be seen as a positive feature ?