By Patrick Avenell at IFA in Berlin
Panasonic today unveiled an audacious plan to introduce automated, cloud-based Smart functionality to home appliances.
It what was essentially a vision statement of how it sees the future of the kitchen, Panasonic said it was working to create appliances for the kitchen and laundry that will have no controls and will respond to gesture and voice control.
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The idea of Smart appliances has traditionally involved users controlling the oven or the washing machine via a smartphone or tablet. More unusual concepts have seen a fridge analysing its contents and then suggesting recipes that it can push to an oven. Panasonic’s Smart vision is quite different.
Laurent Abadie, chairman and CEO of Panasonic Europe, outlined a series of appliances that will connected to each other via the cloud, all with intuitive controls that learn how to operating in synch with the user, based on past preferences.
Panasonic is determined, Abadie said, to explore the way different ways devices in the home can become connected.
“We will use cloud technology to make home appliances easier to use,” he said. “Users will be able to control appliances with gesture and voice controls, and the appliance will intuitively understand what they mean.
“Appliances will be able to understand various languages and will remember past controls to become better at understanding commands.”
Examples shown included a home cook telling an oven what she is about to cook so that it can immediately commence the relevant program and a voice-controlled, button-less washing machine that can sense the weather to give best practice washing advice.