RFID ingredient management refrigerator

With RFID food tracking technology, the refrigerator stands unique among the four essential appliances (color TV, washing machine, and air conditioning) as the only one requiring 24/7 operation. Its constant operation and frequent human-computer interaction create high user stickiness, making refrigerators the second most important family traffic entrance after TVs - truly 'a battleground every brand must fight for

For the intelligent refrigerator, the industry has been shouting for many years, each family also has a lot of fumbling. But the hardware of the “small repairs” has always been with the core function of the refrigerator freshness correlation is not high, did not solve the consumer pain point of food management.

Until April 25, Hisense RFID ingredients management refrigerator listing, leading the refrigerator industry intelligent step forward.

Refrigerator truly intelligent turning point

“Raise your eyebrows!” April 25, Hisense refrigerator company assistant vice president Zhao Xing watch the whole Hisense RFID ingredients management refrigerator listing conference, issued from the bottom of the heart of the lament.

He is a 19-year “veteran” of the refrigerator industry, and he participated in the research and development of Hisense's first refrigerator in 2001. In his career, he has witnessed the continuous evolution and innovation of refrigerator technology.

From simple refrigeration to temperature zone isolation, from single door, two door, three door to open door, multi-door, cross door and French, from single to complex, the refrigerator continues to evolve. Especially in recent years, the rapid development of science and technology, intelligent refrigerators began to enter the user's home and occupy an important position.

But in Zhao Xing's description, this time the RFID ingredient management refrigerator on the market, for Hisense, for the industry has an extraordinary significance.

Around the refrigerator intelligent, the industry has been a lot of exploration. As a radical and creative on the intelligent track, Hisense released the first large-screen refrigerator in 2012, and has been constantly iterating the technology since then. It is also in the process of exploring intelligence, Zhao Xing and colleagues found that the smart refrigerator on the market is still some distance from the real “smart”.

"Although in recent years the industry are mentioning intelligent, will be a large number of development resources are concentrated in the hardware above, and the core function of the refrigerator freshness correlation is not high, and does not further solve the consumer's ingredients management and preservation of pain points. In this sense, the previous intelligence is pseudo intelligence." Feng Tao, executive vice president of Hisense Refrigerator Company, said.

Returning to the essence of the product, doing a good job of managing ingredients and upgrading the core functions of the refrigerator has become the direction of Hisense's research and development of a new generation of intelligent refrigerators.

The premise of the refrigerator intelligent management of ingredients, the first is to realize the automatic identification of ingredients. That is to say, the smart refrigerator must first solve the “see” what ingredients in the refrigerator, and then only to the ingredients for intelligent management and further guidance on cooking delicious and healthy dishes.

As for the first step of the refrigerator really smart, the current industry common is the camera recognition technology, the defects are very obvious. "If the ingredients in the front cover the back, the camera can only see part of it, in addition to frequent opening and closing of the door produces water vapor, which also affects the recognition rate. In the freezing area and variable temperature area, camera recognition is even less of a solution." Hisense refrigerator R & D team judged that the camera recognition technology can only be used as a supplement to the recognition technology, will not become the main force.

Compared with the camera identification technology, RFID technology inherent barrier identification, penetration, batch reading data, long service life has an inherent advantage.

As a key technology to build the Internet of Things, RFID has been widely used in many industries. Such as Walmart, Metro and other international retail giants have used RFID supply chain management technology, Decathlon, Uniqlo and other apparel brands in the global stores to introduce RFID technology for clothing management control and scheduling, etc., but also to solve the problem of anti-counterfeiting.

However, due to the high technical threshold, there have been very few companies successfully RFID successfully used in the field of household refrigerators, coupled with RFID signals are easy to be shielded by fruits and melons and other water-containing ingredients, it is moreover, there is not a single company that can be applied to the refrigerator's refrigerated area.

“From the user experience point of view, if only RFID technology is used in the freezer area, it is only pseudo-smart.” Since we have to do, we have to do the optimal solution. Zhao Xing and his companions want to do is a leading industry technology - through RFID technology to realize the identification and management of the whole field of refrigerator, freezer, greenhouse ingredients.

“R&D staff from the heart, of course, want to do breakthrough, leading technology.” Peng Hanguang, deputy general manager of the electric control R&D department of Hisense Home Appliances Group's R&D center, recalled that the refrigerator company began to conduct technical pre-research for RFID technology in 2018, and in the process the cost of RFID technology gradually dropped to an acceptable range. After internal evaluation, a clear productization project team was formally established at the end of 2019. The advance to the technological no man's land has begun.

Unlike technology followers who can “immerse themselves in the certainty of product development”, technology tasters have to go along with the uncertainty all the way, groping and moving forward in the midst of the ordeal.

During the R&D process, Zhao Xing and his colleagues encountered too many technical problems that they had not encountered before. The most tormented or industry-recognized problem - RFID technology solutions in the refrigerated area. Due to the refrigerated area, many ingredients contain too much water RFID signal is difficult to penetrate, the need for continuous discussion and experimentation to verify the program. The initial version of the program, recognition is only 50%. "Over and over again to change the program, nearly two months of time, the effect is to enhance not up. Some R & D engineers feel that it is impossible to do a good job, and even to beat a retreat." Peng Hanguang said, learned of this situation, Hisense Home Appliances Group President Duan Yuebin convened a meeting of the project team to boost morale, while helping to mobilize all the resources within Hisense Group that can be mobilized to support the project research and development.

At this time, Hisense as a domestic black and white power both in the field of both strong strength of the only enterprise, technology joint complementary advantages of research and development advantages fully displayed.

"How to antenna layout, how to shield the signal, we are ‘laymen’, but Hisense Communications has a deep technical accumulation. And unlike the external companies that cooperated with us before, the colleagues of the communication company will help to think of solutions at the first time after receiving our demands, which plays a very good role in the enhancement of the product experience." Zhao Xing said that with the technical support of Hisense Communications, the one-time recognition rate of RFID in the refrigerated area is now close to 100%, which is much higher than the image recognition technology. “This was an unimaginable indicator at the beginning of the project's development.”

If RFID technology is the eyes of Hisense's ingredient management refrigerator, then AI smart technology is the brain that thinks. As for the refrigerator's large-screen interactive AI function, Hisense Refrigerator commissioned Hisense Vision and Jushang to develop the technology. "In the whole refrigerator industry, the effect of each family on the big screen interaction experience is similar, mostly by the same technology company output program, the experience is not very good, and there is a big gap with the TV. This commissioned video development, whether it is the software interface or system architecture, interactive experience, the effect can be said to be turned upside down, truly reflects the technical strength of the color TV industry boss, gave us a great shock." Bao Yufeng, deputy general manager of Hisense Home Appliances R&D Center, said.

“Don't look at the refrigerator screen is smaller than the TV screen, but it can be said that ‘all the organs are in one place’, involving the terminal, the system side, the voice, etc., and we have invested dozens of people's manpower as a whole.” At the end of 2019, Xiao Yuan, the product planning manager of Hisense's video software, joined Hisense's RFID ingredient management research and development team, responsible for refrigerator screen product development, and striving to create a “smart product with temperature”. This is a summary of Xiao Yuan's previous R&D experience, but also the implementation of Hisense's technical values - compared to sister companies within the group, they can better understand the product needs of the refrigerator company.

The unique 1+1>2 technical advantage is added, and the rest is to fight for speed and time. Staying up late and working overtime became a routine.

After more than four months of suffering, the R&D team got equal returns. Now, they can proudly introduce Hisense ingredients management refrigerator “black science and technology” - refrigerators throughout the region are realized RFID technology, which is the industry has no precedent for technological breakthroughs.

At the same time, Hisense ingredients management refrigerator can not only monitor the number of ingredients, according to the frequency of use of ingredients, remind the user to timely replenish or clean up, but also to achieve intelligent recipes recommended nutritional dietary advice, to solve the user refrigerator inside what, what can be eaten, how to eat more healthy three major pain points, to provide users with health, food, food, entertainment and health of the five-in-one service, the real realization of the refrigerator ingredients of intelligent management. Intelligent management. In addition to the voice interaction function, it also connects to the world's largest Internet TV cloud platform Jushang, watching TV and listening to music and catching up on variety shows, all of which can be synchronized with cooking.

"Over the past few years, we have been fully committed to doing what we do best, which is to use innovative technology to make the best products and provide users with the best quality service. In the past, people always thought that in the future, technology would be able to predict our needs, manage our ingredients and make life more convenient and interesting. At this moment, I would like to say that the future is here, right now, and Hisense ingredient management refrigerator is the brand new starting point." At the conference, Feng Tao's speech was full of energy.

A brand new starting point

Indeed, this is not the end, is a brand new starting point.

Now, Zhao Xing and his colleagues have been put into the development of Hisense ingredient management refrigerator version 2.0. If the 1.0 version is the result of three-way cooperation between Hisense Refrigerator, Hisense Video and Communication Company, in their planning blueprint, they also want to link up more resources of Hisense Group. For example, through the cooperation with the national smart home demonstration platform Juhao Union, to open up the ecological supply chain of food ingredients, reduce the circulation links, realize contactless distribution, and become a communication channel and a bond of trust between fresh food suppliers and users.

The future smart kitchen scenes are being shown one by one.

Hisense's plans go beyond this.

On the basis of decades of industrial architecture, Hisense has laid out a 5-10 year smart life strategy, through the gathering of good-looking, gathering good connection, gathering good use, gathering good food, gathering fun, gathering good learning and other “6 gathering” ecology, to realize the whole scene from the family to the community to the city of the wisdom of the ecology.

In the living room, the TV, fully armed with various technologies, is becoming the private cloud center, display center and control center of the family that can be linked to unlimited scenarios, and has become the most important entrance to the family traffic. Hisense, which has been No. 1 in the Chinese market for 16 consecutive years, has established an unrepeatable technological barrier.

As one of the few non-mobile terminals in the home that is on 24 hours a day, the refrigerator has frequent human-computer interaction and high user stickiness, and this advantage makes it the second entrance to home traffic after the TV. Hisense ingredient management refrigerator, a new species, will make Hisense more competitive in this battle for home traffic.

At the beginning of April, in order to cooperate with the comprehensive landing of the intelligent life strategy, Hisense relaunched the brand slogan “love, technology is also moving”, so that technology gives products and services more imagination and possibility.

This is a picture that makes people yearn for - "In the core carrier of ‘home’, we enjoy a new type of social relationship; we feel the screen with attitude, data with story, scene with content, and intelligent with temperature. temperature intelligence."