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What's For Dinner? — Just Call Your Refrigerator

GE Imagines the Kitchen of the Future with Consumer Convenience, Personal Style and Innovation

Louisville, Ky. — You are at the office and decide to invite friends over for dinner that night. What's for dinner? Just pick up the phone and call home. Your kitchen can give you a heads up on what foods you have in the refrigerator and pantry, suggest menus that use some of those foods, and once you've selected the menu, it will supply a grocery list for other items you need to pick up. Use the same call to leave a message for your spouse to put some wine in the refrigerator to chill. Sound implausible?

When the brightest minds at the Industrial Design Operation of GE Consumer & Industrial were asked to design the Kitchen of the Future — that is how they imagined it?

"This design exercise affords the perfect opportunity to showcase the innovative thinking of GE's industrial designers and engineers. These are the men and women who will conceptualize tomorrow's kitchen," explains Paul Klein, GM Brand and Advertising for GE Consumer & Industrial.

An Interconnected Suite
Imagine awaking in the morning and walking into the kitchen. Ask about the weather and a voice responds to your question with the accurate current weather and forecast. Ask, "What's for breakfast?" and the kitchen will offer a list of foods available and menu possibilities. Select your meal, and you're ready to start the simple preparations needed. And, when some of what you cooked for breakfast still remains on the cooktop, no worries, the cooktop will clean itself.

The concept kitchen is envisioned as an interconnected suite of products with interactive controls. This suite of appliances is designed for efficiency. A modular approach to the kitchen configuration affords efficiencies in energy, advances in usability and a sleek minimal style.

The entire suite offers a full-width display combined with touch sensors across the entire surface. What does that mean for consumers? Imagine new possibilities for recipe presentation and entertainment. In total, this surface affords multiple levels of interaction and the navigation of complex information.

Interconnected pieces communicate with each other and coordinate the effort using predictive computing. Imagine a kitchen taking inventory of the food in the refrigerator, presenting menu options and creating a shopping list. A cooking guide walks consumers through the process of new cooking techniques or simple meal preparation.

GE's industrial designers and engineers envision organic light emitting diode (OLED) technology as the primary lighting source in the kitchen of the future and have represented this with a fabric canopy with lights above the kitchen.

The height of each appliance offers comfortable access to the work and information areas within an easy to reach "strike zone." It can be installed at varying heights depending upon user preference and is advantageous to those with limited mobility.

Focus on environmentally friendly products
The GE Kitchen of the Future will put a focus on environmentally friendly products to reduce pollution and increase efficiency while lowering operating costs.

The Kitchen of the Future will provide clean water purified via ultraviolet light assuring that the water is free of bacteria without chemicals. Consumers will load the dishwasher with detergent in bulk and it will be dispensed via algorithms to minimize the cleaning agents in wastewater. GE envisions that in the future, gray (waste) water can be diverted for other home and garden applications.

Kitchen of the Future — Fact Sheet

Louisville, Ky — While modular in nature, each GE Kitchen of the Future appliance still serves its purpose within the interconnected suite of interactive products:

Refrigerator
A sensor knows what has been placed in the unit and updates an electronic list of all contents. The unit uses this information to assist the consumer by not only offering an inventory of foods available but also by working with the inventory from the pantry to suggest menus. The sensor also knows an item's relative position and will automatically adjust local atmospheric conditions (temperature and humidity) for optimal food preservation. Advanced aero-gel and vacuum panel insulation afford thinner walls creating more room for what consumers want to store with greater efficiency. OLED lighting provides evenly distributed lighting that saves space.

Speedcook Oven
Bright halogen light delivers oven-quality food up to eight times faster than a conventional oven. A sensor recognizes prepackaged foods and automatically selects the right cooking time and levels for fast, no touch, cooking.

Multi-Technology Oven
Microwave, thermal and convection energies combine to cook food better and faster. Based on a menu selection, the oven automatically pre-heats. A thermo-scan of the oven shows which areas of food are at proper temperature. Waste heat is used to heat water for washing dishes.

Slide-Out Cooktop
The cooktop features sensing technologies that sense where a pan is placed and optimize the burner size for efficiency. Boiling sensors sound an alert if liquids have boiled away. A self-cleaning feature activates upon retraction.

Ionizing Vent
The slide out vent will be used as a down draft, eliminating smoke and odors and with the use of ionizing HEPA filters it will release clean air back into the room.

Water System
Clean water will be purified via ultraviolet light that ensures that water is free of bacteria without using chemicals. Pure water and ice are available through the refrigerator and instant hot water is available on demand. The system will monitor water quality as it enters the house and will communicate with the consumer should there be a problem. The water system will eliminate tastes, odors, color, bacteria and chemical contaminants from the water.

Dishwasher
Water for kitchen clean up is heated through thermo waste created by the wall oven. Detergent is loaded in bulk once per year, and dispensed via algorithms to minimize the cleaning agents in wastewater. Grey water created though dish cleaning is reprocessed for use in other areas of the home and garden.

GE Consumer & Industrial spans the globe as an industry leader in major appliance, lighting and integrated industrial equipment, systems and services. Providing solutions for commercial, industrial and residential use in more than 100 countries, GE Consumer & Industrial uses innovative technologies and "ecomagination," a GE initiative to aggressively bring to market new technologies that help customers and consumers meet pressing environmental challenges, to deliver comfort, convenience and electrical protection and control. General Electric (NYSE: GE) brings imagination to work, selling products under the Monogram®, Profile™ GE®, Hotpoint®, SmartWater™ Reveal®, Edison™ and Energy Smart™ consumer brands, and Entellisys™ industrial brand. For more information, consumers may visit www.ge.com.

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