The Movable Fridge is voice activated and navigates on its own using onboard sensors. (Image credit Panasonic via YouTube)
Never again will you miss that all-important play during a football game, or miss that all important dialog exchange during a movie when going to the fridge for a cold one or snack. Instead of going to the fridge, why not have the fridge come to you? That’s the idea behind Panasonic’s autonomous, smart Movable Fridge, which comes to your location using verbal commands.
The icebox is outfitted with sensors for safe navigation (won’t run into things or harm humans) as well as spatial awareness through mapping- meaning it’s capable of self-location in any given environment. Panasonic unveiled the smart appliance at this year’s (2017) IFA trade show hosted in Berlin.
The Movable Fridge is part of Panasonic’s Better Living Tomorrow conceptual line of smart technology heading to homes of the near future. Besides the smart fridge, Panasonic unveiled a host of other IoT-based devices and platforms, including a Sake Cooler that not only chills the rice-based beverage but also offers suggestions on food pairings to go with that particular brand simply by scanning the label.
Panasonic also introduced the Sustainable Maintainer- an intelligent laundry system that identifies clothing material and the manufacturers washing recommendations and automatically chooses the optimum settings for said clothes.
The company’s AI Collaborative Kitchen was also showcased and features an advisor who offers up suggestions and recipes for various occasions. Its recommendations are garnered by taking information from cooking research organizations as well as professional chefs and then polls any connected appliances you may have to come to the best offering.
Need a children’s educational partner? Panasonic has you covered there as well with their Educational Partner robotic sphere, which offers a host of services through collaboration with academic institutions. Panasonic says the robot is intended to encourage children’s ‘autonomous growth’ through interactive play. The bot is outfitted with a camera and takes snapshots of your kids interacting with it to record your child’s growth and even learns and becomes more intelligent the more interaction it has.
While all of Panasonic’s Better Living Tomorrow gadgets are interesting and even border on the comical, they are only proof of concept and aren’t representative of the final product, if they ever hit the market. Chances are, they continue to undergo development before they become available for the smart-home communities or us regular Joes who are too tired to go to the fridge.
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