What's For Dinner? Just Call Your RefrigeratorGE Imagines the Kitchen of the Future with Consumer Convenience, Personal Style and Innovation LOUISVILLE, Kentucky -- 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 impossible? 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, general manager of brand and advertising for GE Consumer & Industrial.
An interconnected suite 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 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. 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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