IoT Chef

A connected cooking system for better cooking and eating experiences

Consumers increasingly desire healthy meals, but with limited time and lack of knowledge and ingredients, people also tend to limit the diversity of their meals. The IoT Chef project will use IoT technology to develop a connected system that enables cooking tools and appliances to “talk” to each other for more efficient, safe and healthy food preparation, and gives meal recommendations based on users’ unique preferences.

Efficiency and health in the kitchen

The societal shift towards healthier lifestyles is complicated by the fact that people have less time to prepare nutritious food. Certain products already exist to address this, but they usually consist of a single, dedicated kitchen appliance such as a pot, pan or oven connected to the user’s smartphone via an app. Consequently, these solutions are limited to a few functionalities, and don’t involve multiple connected appliances working together to optimize cooking processes, air quality, noise levels, energy use and food taste. IoT Chef aims to develop an end-to-end system that does just that.

Cooking appliances that think for themselves

Consortium partners include cooking tool and appliance experts, smart innovations in food preparation, and food technology. IoT Chef will rely on sensors in the hob, pots and stove hood to automate cooking. In addition, the system will be able to suggest new meals and recipes according to a person’s tastes, preparation methods and personal constraints. An excellent user experience is an important aspect of this system to maximize user adoption.

Connecting tools with sensor and ingredient data

Together, these diverse partners will tackle key IoT- and AI-related challenges. These include the development of IoT-enabled kitchen hardware, wireless channels in metallic kitchen environments, a self-learning recipe recommendation database and algorithms for automatic food preparation, tool maintenance and air quality control.

A leap forward in IoT knowledge

New food preparation knowledge, software and hardware modules and a UX interface will be primary outcomes of the IoT Chef project. Consortium partners intend to protect the technical innovations from the IoT project and the concerned technology fields via patents or other intellectual property rights. Even more, a multidimensional approach will be developed to assess user experience and interaction in IoT applications.