We’re nonetheless sifting via among the cool product demos from CES final month, and one which caught my eye was the demo by NXP of a presence-sensing cooktop powered by an embedded MCU with what the chip firm describes as a Neural Processing Unit that runs the machine studying and facial-recognition algorithms throughout the system slightly than counting on a cloud-based compute. The demo featured a tool management interface from Diehl Controls.
As will be seen within the video beneath (taken by TIRIAS Analysis Principal Analyst Francis Sideco), NXP spokesperson Thomas Herbert exhibits that you would be able to activate the burner with both contact or movement sensing (together with movement sensing with cooking mitts on). From there, the system is utilizing facial recognition to detect if an individual is inside native proximity of the cooktop. In accordance with Herbert, presence detection comes into play in a situation the place there’s a essential state, such because the pan getting too sizzling and there’s water boiling over. If the system detects a essential state and nobody is standing across the range, it’s going to shut off the warmth and may ship an alert to the particular person through a Matter (an open-source sensible house connectivity commonplace) enabled system to alert the cook dinner that the system has intervened on their behalf.
The demo is attention-grabbing to me in a few contexts. One is that, as we’ve written about right here on the Spoon, the primary motive for fires within the house is because of cooking mishaps, and enabling your stovetop or different cooking home equipment to acknowledge each anomalies in addition to the presence of somebody may very well be an actual gamechanger, akin to the dip in vehicle accidents lately as a result of widespread prevalence of blindspot detection methods in trendy automobiles.
The second context that’s attention-grabbing is that it may turn out to be a major know-how in aiding aging-in-place eventualities, notably for seniors who turn out to be slightly extra forgetful as they age. One of many key determinants of whether or not of us can proceed to dwell independently is their potential to feed themselves, and by offering “blind spot” detection like this, my guess is this might prolong many seniors’ potential to dwell independently for years.
