- You know one of the rooms
we spend a lot of time in
when we're at home, is the kitchen.
And for decades it stayed
pretty much the same.
But all of that is about to change,
we're gonna give you a glimpse
at what a kitchen of the
future might look like.
I'm here with Lamont,
he's gonna give us the low-down
on this gorgeous machine,
the Samsung Family Hub.
What can you tell me
about this refrigerator?
- Well, there's a lot of
things I can tell you,
to start off, the Samsung's Family Hub
is basically a 21 1/2 inch WiFi screen.
You can actually interact with it
and we broke it down in
three different categories.
You got family connections,
you have food management
and entertainment.
The whole story behind
Family Hub is pretty simple.
Years ago, people used to use their
refrigerator as kind of like the central
point of communication in the home.
But as people shifted toward
french door refrigerators,
a lot of new french door models
you can't put magnets on front,
so you can't save notes, memos,
or all the other little
stuff you need to do.
Now, with Family Hub, it's
gonna bring it all back
and make it a central point
of your family once again.
Now to go under family
connections, for example,
you take multiple calendars
and sync them all into one.
So no longer have to
check different calendars,
Outlook, Google, you can
check everybody's calendar
all at one place.
That's one big benefit.
Another one, let's say, let's
go on a trip to Disney World,
you want to show all those great photos.
Well, where do you save them?
You can now upload photos
from your smartphone,
tablet or computer or you can also do it
through a USB port and
now save those photos
all on your main screen of the Family Hub.
But going to food management,
because what's the purpose
of your refrigerator,
to manage your food.
So now there's a couple
features, (mumbles),
For one, it's gonna have
an app on Food Reminder,
you can actually go on there
and actually take live photos
of your actual food in your fridge.
It's three cameras built inside
and every time you shut the door,
it will take a photo
inside the fridge itself.
And in here, just to show you,
the three cameras will be located
right here along the seal.
Another cool feature, you
can order online groceries.
So if it's a cold winter
day let's say, in Michigan,
and you don't want to
leave your home becuase
you know, you're stuck in,
you can now order groceries online
through our MasterCard, also Yummly,
and we partner with several retailers,
grocery retailers where you can do that.
And then last but not least,
you got the entertainment side.
So now you can stream Pandora radio,
you can also do on tune
in radio, live music,
and you can even mirror it with your
Samsung smart TV.
All that and more in
your Samsung Family Hub.
Basically, it's a meaningful innovation.
It helps you make every
day situations in your life
easier, all due to Family Hub.
- Lamont thank you so much man.
- Thank you so much,
pleasure talking to you.
- Really appreciate it.
Now, I'm here at Whirlpool,
with my new friend, Richard,
and Richard's gonna walk
me through what a typical
morning would be like in a smart kitchen,
a connected kitchen and how
that could really help us
in our day to day activity.
So, Richard, morning has sprung.
- Yep.
- Walk me through what it would be like
to work in this space.
- So, imagine I'm Dad.
And I'm staying home
and I've got to get the
family out the door.
The morning's probably one of
the busiest times of the day,
so this is where the interactive
kitchen of the future
can kind of help us along
and manage the household
getting ready for the day.
So, as I walk across to the cook top,
I can set my coffee down
and the intelligent cook top
will recognize that's it's my coffee cup
and it will keep it warm
to my desired temperature.
I can see my schedule for the day
and I can see the baby in the monitor,
so, everything that I need right now,
that's relevant to me, is presented to me.
It looks like the baby's stirring,
we are at sea, so it
does get a little noisy,
so I better get a bottle to feed the baby.
It shows that the last bottle was
two hours and 15 minutes ago,
and sleep time was two hours, 45 minutes.
- Goodness, so yea, we've got a lot of
data tracking going on,
we've got connective technology going on,
this is great!
- Yes, so you know, like
with the coffee cup,
I can set the bottle down on the counter
and it's gonna recognize that bottle
and it's gonna warm it to
the perfect temperature.
There's no more worrying
about if it's too hot
or if it's not warm enough.
- So yea, you can preset all
of this so that the container,
or the bottle here, is going to be
the right temperature for baby--
- Exactly.
- If you switch it out
with your coffee mug,
it's gonna go back to whatever
you preset for your coffee--
- Exactly.
- And it knows the difference.
- Yea, the cook top
will recognize the item
and it will adjust the
way you place the item,
it's not necessarily you having to
put it where we tell you to.
- Well that's wonderful!
So this is great, I love the idea of,
it's not just a smart kitchen,
it's also helping you
manage your schedule,
it's helping you stay on top of things
because you have all the
information right in front of you.
You know what time it is.
You know what is coming up,
if the kids need to get out the door,
it's right there in front of you.
- Yep.
- There's none of that running around
what do I do next?
- Exactly.
As you can see by the schedule
the school bus is arriving,
and I got to get my daughter out the door,
so I can put her lunchbox
down on the cook top
and it's gonna tell me the
ingredients of the lunchbox.
Now, with health and
nutrition being so important,
it's telling me that she could really
use a grain for the day.
So, the cook top is gonna recommend
that I add an oatmeal bar as a suggestion,
it knows I have them on hand,
so I can place that in the lunch bag
and it's gonna update and show that
nutrition is good for the day.
- That's amazing.
I could definitely use that.
- Yes, yes.
- That's wonderful.
Well, Richard, thank you so much,
I really appreciate it.
- Thank you.
- This is a great vision of what
the kitchen of the future will be like.
I kind of, I kind of need it now.
- Yes, yes, but hopefully in
the very, very near future.
- Excellent.
So, I'm here with Ben.
And Ben, you're gonna tell me
about the Whirlpool Fridge.
Now the first thing I notice is that,
this is a smart connected fridge
but has a different design philosophy
than what we've seen with some other ones.
It doesn't have the ginormous
screen on the front.
Can you tell me a little bit about
the philosophy behind
this particular design?
- The Whirlpool smart
fridge really was designed
to, kind of, help you
manage both the refrigerator
and help kind of anticipate
needs before they happen.
So, having the screen on the fridge,
might be useful in some instances,
but let's say you're at the grocery store
and you need to take some action.
You've got a bunch of friends coming over
for a party or get together in an hour,
you can remotely, for instance, on the app
activate party mode and what this will do,
this will automatically turn
on faster ice in the fridge.
When you get home your
fridge has been dropped
to a lower temperature,
so as I'm opening and closing the door,
it's gonna keep that cool
temperature in there.
And that party mode will even trigger
things on other appliances, for instance,
the oven can go into a keep warm setting.
But again, it's all about making sure
that we're giving you control
and that access no matter where you are.
Whether you're standing right here
or perhaps at the grocery store.
- That's excellent, so
really I love this idea
that it has different settings
for different situations,
so that you don't have to sit there
and manually do things on your phone
and say, I better knock this
degree down a little bit
because that door's gonna open and close
because we're gonna have
a lot of people over.
I also understand that there's
some inter connectivity
with other services such
as the nest thermostat,
can you tell me a little bit about that?
- Yea, so what's really
exciting about it is
our entire kitchen suite
actually integrates with
the nest thermostat.
So let's say, for instance,
that you go into an away mode,
right, and you're thermostat says,
okay, no one's in the house,
the dishwasher will automatically turn on.
So instead of having to do the delay start
where it's like, well four hours from now
I think I'm gonna be gone,
that's when I want to run;
now it will just run whenever you
do end up leaving the home.
Or if your thermostat goes to an away
and you left your oven on,
it will actually notify you on your phone,
it will say, hey, just a heads
up, your oven's still on.
On the fridge, Nest Rush Hour Rewards,
is the ability to tether up
with a local utility company
and understand when their
peak demand periods.
And so during that peak demand period,
Nest can inform the fridge
to take corrective action
to kind of avoid running, for instance,
the defrost cycle.
Which normally would use more energy
but it can wait to do that
until after that peak period has ended.
- Would this alert me, for example,
if I accidentally forgot to close a door?
- Yea, so some things like if
you forget to close a door,
it will let you know, give you a heads up,
say, hey, by the way, I
think the door might be ajar.
Another really neat one is,
let's say you're gone at work all day,
power goes out, let's say
it's been out for six hours
but then turns back on
just before you get home.
Now normally, you and I would have no idea
that my power was out all day
and milk was sitting there the whole day.
Well now, it notifies you
that that power went out,
so I can get home and be like, okay,
I'm gonna check this milk twice
before I pour myself a glass.
- Exactly.
- Yea.
- Alright, and I also heard
there's some integration
with Amazon, can you
tell me more about that?
- Yea, yea, so really exciting.
We're gonna be soon integrating
some of our appliances
with the Amazon dash program.
And essentially what this
will allow us to do is,
things like your washer and dryer
or your dishwasher, they can
use cycle count information
to anticipate when you're running low
on things like detergent or dryer sheets.
And when you're just about to run out,
they'll automatically
reorder more through Amazon,
so that it shows up just in time
and you're never running out
of those detergents or dryer sheets
when you need them the most.
- So it's like the little automated
dash buttons that we saw,
except it's integrated
directly to the technology.
- It's taking it to the next level, yes.
So instead of having the
buttons all over your home,
it's like, let's just have
the appliances themselves
kind of anticipate those needs
because they already know that.
- So, I guess you could say that
the whole philosophy is that
this is technology that makes our lives
less stressful, more seamless.
- Absolutely.
- Where things are taken care of for us
so we can concentrate on other things.
- Exactly.
Our whole mentality is to help families
care for one another and
take some of that care
off their shoulders.
And by doing that through
smarter automation
we can really help a family thrive
in ways that they never
really could before.
- That's fantastic, that's a great story.
Ben, thank you so much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
- Yea, thank you, absolutely.
- Alright, so I am excited to get this
kitchen of the future as soon as possible.
Because it's really cool to
see how all this technology
can communicate with one another
and not only make our lives easier
but also help us be more energy conscious.
It's phenomenal stuff, right?
Well, to learn more about this
and other topics and
everything that's cool
and weird and awesome in the world,
you need to come to
http://now.howstuffworks.com, every day.
That's all for now.
