Whirlpool’s smart countertop oven sets cooking time and temperature

Smart ovens that recognize food and automatically adjust to the right cooking time and temp accordingly might seem like the future, but Whirlpool’s new smart oven can do just that in seconds flat. At the CES 2019 show today, the Michigan company demoed the new Smart Countertop Oven, which taps machine learning and a database of recipes to take the arduousness out of meal prep.
It’s comparable in some ways to the June oven, which offers similar ingredient-recognizing tech. But it’s $200 pricier.
“This new smart oven is about making cooking easier, intuitive and customized. It takes the guesswork out of cooking,” said Doug Searles, general manager at Whirlpool. “The oven also demonstrates how at [Whirlpool], we … develop innovations that truly break the mold and unlock the next generation of products for the home.”
The Smart Countertop Oven — a graduate of Whirlpool’s internal incubator, WLabs — applies ingredient-recognizing computer vision algorithms to built-in cameras to suss out an appropriate cooking algorithm, which in turn controls the time and temperature. (For select frozen products, a barcode will do.)
It doesn’t require manual preheating, in some cases — Whirlpool says that preheat times are built into “most” cooking algorithms. And it supports the Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa, for those who prefer to do their roasting hands-free.
Other spotlight features include the ability to check in on ingredients as they cook, cooking status notification, and a smart food thermometer that ensures food gets cooking all the way through.
Coinciding with the Smart Countertop Oven’s reveal, Whirlpool launched Yummly Pro, a subscription platform on the Yummly app with step-by-step video instructions from celebrity chefs including Carla Hall, Richard Blais, Jet Tila, and Daniel Holzman. Pricing has yet to be announced.
“We know home cooks turn to streaming platforms, television shows and social channels of their favorite food publications and influencers to learn how and what to cook,” Adam Soldinger, head of digital strategy at Yummly, said. “Yummly Pro takes learning one step further by serving up cooking content from popular chefs and influencers. The exclusive experience takes users on a cooking journey, from beginner to advance skills and recipes, improving their cooking skills and overall confidence in the kitchen.”
Whirlpool’s Smart Countertop Oven will be available for preorder starting at $799.
Source: VentureBeat