CN117064178A

CN117064178A - Highlighting storage locations in household appliances

Info

Publication number: CN117064178A
Application number: CN202210504796.9A
Authority: CN
Inventors: E·杰罗姆
Original assignee: Electrolux Appliances AB
Current assignee: Electrolux Appliances AB
Priority date: 2022-05-10
Filing date: 2022-05-10
Publication date: 2023-11-17

Abstract

The invention relates to a method for highlighting the position of a food (13) to be stored in a household appliance (10) and to a household appliance (10) for carrying out the method. In a first aspect, a method of highlighting a location of a food to be stored in a household appliance (10) is provided. The method comprises the following steps: -receiving (S101) an identifier configured to identify a food (13) to be stored in an appliance; determining (S102) a location in the household appliance (10) where the identified food (13) is to be stored based on information associated with the received identifier; and controlling (S103) a glass door (14) of the household appliance (10) to determine, at the identified food (13), a position (19) to be stored from opaque to transparent.

Description

Highlighting storage locations in household appliances

Technical Field

The present disclosure relates to a method of highlighting (highlight) a location of food to be stored in a home appliance and a home appliance performing the method.

Background

In prior art household appliance standards for storing food (e.g., wine cabinets configured to store wine bottles), dedicated lighting devices are used to highlight specific parts inside the appliance.

In e.g. wine cabinets, the shelves on which the wine bottles are stored may be equipped with a light source, e.g. in the form of a Light Emitting Diode (LED), which is activated to emit light at the location where the particular wine bottle is stored, in order to inform the user accordingly.

However, dedicated light sources have to be mounted to each shelf, which is costly and may not be desirable to the user from an aesthetic point of view.

Disclosure of Invention

It is an object to solve or at least alleviate this problem in the art and thus to provide an improved method for highlighting the location of food to be stored in a household appliance.

This object is achieved in a first aspect by a method of highlighting the location of a food to be stored in a household appliance. The method comprises the following steps: receiving an identifier configured to identify food to be stored in an appliance; determining a location in the appliance where the identified food is to be stored based on information associated with the received identifier; and controlling a glass door of the home appliance to change from opaque to transparent at the identified food determined to be stored.

This object is achieved in a second aspect by a household appliance configured to highlight a location of a food to be stored in the household appliance. The household appliance comprises a processing unit configured to: receiving an identifier configured to identify food to be stored in the appliance; determining a location in the appliance where the identified food is to be stored based on information associated with the received identifier; and controlling a glass door of the home appliance to change from opaque to transparent at the identified food determined to be stored.

In an example, a user may have a smart phone that executes a wine cabinet control application (app) to wirelessly transmit instructions to a processing unit of a household appliance using, for example, bluetooth. The wine cabinet control app may include a virtual wine cellar function in which a user records her wine at the time of a wine transaction. In this case, the foodstuff to be stored is a wine bottle.

The smartphone wirelessly transmits a bottle identifier of the bottle to be stored (e.g., obtained by scanning a bottle bar code) to a processing unit. Upon receiving the bottle identifier, the processing unit determines the location at which the identified bottle is to be stored in the appliance (in this example, a wine cabinet) based on information associated with the identified bottle. As will be appreciated, this may be determined by the app executing on the smartphone, which may access information about the bottles stored in the cabinet.

For example, the information associated with the received bottle identifier may indicate: the bottles contain wine of a specific grape (mero, radars, sira, etc.), whether it is red or white and therefore should be stored in a specific temperature zone of the cabinet, whether the bottles are standard-sized bottles (and therefore should be placed on shelves) or large bottles (to be placed on the floor inside the cabinet), from which area the wine comes (implying a specific shelf for storage), etc.

After having determined the current storage position of the bottle, the household appliance controls the glass door of the wine cabinet to change from opaque to transparent in the position where the bottle is stored, and advantageously visually indicates to the user where to place the bottle.

In one embodiment, receiving the identifier includes: the identifier is obtained by scanning a bar code of the foodstuff comprising the identifier.

In an embodiment, determining the location at which the identified food is to be stored further comprises considering a storage instruction that is preconfigured for the information associated with the received identifier.

In an embodiment, the information associated with the received bottle identifier indicates one or more of the following: which specific grape the wine is made from, whether the wine is red or white, the size of the wine bottle, and from which area the wine comes.

In an embodiment, the identifier is received through a wireless communication interface of the home appliance.

In a third aspect, a computer program is provided, comprising computer executable instructions for causing a household appliance to perform the steps in the method of the first aspect when the computer executable instructions are executed on a processing unit comprised in the household appliance.

In a fourth aspect, there is provided a computer program product comprising a computer readable medium having embodied thereon a computer program according to the third aspect.

Further embodiments will be discussed below.

In general, all terms used in the claims should be interpreted according to their ordinary meaning in the technical field unless explicitly defined otherwise herein. All references to "a/an/the element, device, component, means, step, etc" are to be interpreted openly as referring to at least one instance of the element, device, component, means, step, etc., unless explicitly stated otherwise. The steps of any method disclosed herein do not have to be performed in the exact order disclosed, unless explicitly stated.

Drawings

Various aspects and embodiments will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates a household appliance configured to store food, in which embodiments may be implemented;

fig. 2 shows the household appliance of fig. 1, wherein the door is closed;

FIG. 3 shows an embodiment in which the glass of the appliance door is selected to be of an electrically controllable type, switching between a non-transparent state and a transparent state;

FIG. 4 illustrates a flow chart showing a method of highlighting the location of a wine bottle to be stored in a wine cabinet according to an embodiment;

FIG. 5 illustrates control of glass door transparency according to an embodiment;

fig. 6 illustrates an appliance according to an embodiment.

Detailed Description

Various aspects of the present disclosure will now be described more fully hereinafter with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which specific embodiments of the invention are shown.

These aspects may, however, be embodied in many different forms and should not be construed as limiting; rather, these embodiments are provided by way of example so that this disclosure will be thorough and complete, and will fully convey the scope of all aspects of the invention to those skilled in the art. Like numbers refer to like elements throughout.

Fig. 1 illustrates a household appliance 10 configured to store food, wherein embodiments may be implemented. Throughout the description, the home appliance will be embodied in the form of a wine cabinet (i.e. a wine refrigerator) storing food embodied in the form of wine bottles.

The wine cabinet 10 comprises a plurality of holders 11, which holders 11 are configured to store bottles 13 in the form of shelves on which the bottles 13 are stored. It is contemplated that the interior of the cabinet 10 may include an additional pair of shelves for further storing bottles, or that the bottom of the interior of the cabinet 10 may be devoid of shelves, as shown in fig. 1, so that larger items, such as large bottles (magnum bottles), may be stored on the cabinet floor.

The illumination device 12 may be disposed within the cabinet 10, in this example, from bottom to top along the opening of the cabinet. The illumination device 12 may be activated continuously, for example, to create an ambient illumination within the cabinet 10, or may be activated to illuminate the interior of the cabinet 10 when a user opens the cabinet door 14.

The wine cabinet 10 can be provided with different temperature areas; for example, the top portion may be configured to store wine at a first temperature and the bottom portion may be configured to store wine at a second temperature, wherein the two portions are thermally separated from each other. Generally, white wine is stored at a slightly lower temperature than red wine.

Fig. 2 shows the cabinet 10 of fig. 1 with the cabinet door 14 closed. The door 14 may be provided with a handle 15 or a push function to automatically open the door 14 when the user lightly presses the door 14. Alternatively, the upper part of the door may be provided with an embedded profile portion which the user can operate to open the door.

The front glass 16 of the door 14 is provided opaque to avoid exposure of the bottle to ambient light.

Fig. 3 shows an embodiment in which the glass 16 of the door 14 is selected to be of an electrically controllable type to switch between a non-transparent state and a transparent state, even for a small portion of the glass door 14.

The switching of the transparency of the glass door 14 may be caused by a controller 18, referred to as a Central Processing Unit (CPU), communicatively coupled to the glass door 14.

Further shown in fig. 3 is a communication device 17, such as a smart phone, which executes a wine cabinet control application (app) to wirelessly communicate instructions to the CPU 18 (also equipped with a wireless communication facility) using, for example, bluetooth. Other means of communication are conceivable, such as Wi-Fi, radio Frequency Identification (RFID) or Near Field Communication (NFC). The wine cabinet control app may include a virtual wine cellar function in which a user records her wine at the time of a wine transaction.

Thus, a user of the smartphone 17 can operate the app on the smartphone to communicate with the CPU 18 of the wine cabinet 10 for switching the glass 16 of the door 14 between the non-transparent state and the transparent state.

Referring now to fig. 4, fig. 4 shows a flow chart illustrating a method for highlighting a location of a wine bottle to be stored in a wine cabinet, assuming that a user will store a bottle of wine in the wine cabinet and thus scan the bar code of the bottle using her smartphone 17, according to an embodiment.

This embodiment is further described with reference to fig. 5.

The smartphone 17 will send the bottle identifier (as obtained by scanning the bar code) wirelessly to the CPU 18. In a first step S101, the CPU 18 thus receives an identifier by the smartphone 17 scanning the bottle bar code, the identifier being configured to identify the bottle to be stored.

Upon receiving the bottle identifier, the CPU 18 determines the location in the appliance where the identified bottle is to be stored based on information associated with the identified bottle in step S102. As will be appreciated, this may be determined by the app executing on the smartphone 17, which may access information about the bottles stored in the cabinet 10.

Alternatively, instead of the user scanning the bar code of the bottle using her smartphone 17, the CPU 18 may be provided with a function in which the identifier is acquired by letting the user approach the bottle to the CPU 18 so that the CPU can acquire the identifier. In a further option, the identifier is obtained by reading an RFID tag (or NFC tag) attached to the bottle, for example, using the smartphone 17 or CPU 18. Thus, any suitable carrier of bottle identifiers may be read by the smartphone 17 or CPU 18. In a further alternative, the camera of the smartphone 17 is used to take an image of the bottle label (bottle label) and the app is used to extract the identifier using image processing and possibly other useful information (year of manufacture, grape type, bottle size, etc.), or the household appliance 10 is equipped with a camera for this purpose.

For example, the information associated with the received bottle identifier may indicate: the bottles contain wine of a specific grape (mero, radars, sira, etc.), whether the wine is red or white and should therefore be stored in a specific temperature zone of the cabinet 10, whether the bottles are standard-sized bottles (and should therefore be placed on shelves 11) or large bottles (to be placed on the floor inside the cabinet 10), from which area the wine comes from (implying a specific shelf 11 for storage), etc.

In this exemplary embodiment, it is assumed that the bottle contains wine made of Leesquire and that Leesquire wine is stored on a second shelf in the cabinet 10. The stored instructions may be preconfigured in the app by a user.

Thus, in step S102, the CPU 18 determines that the scanned bottle is to be placed in an empty storage location on the second shelf, in this case (see fig. 1) next to the fourth bottle on the second shelf.

After the current storage location of the bottles has been determined, as shown in fig. 5, the CPU 18 controls the glass door 14 of the wine cabinet 10 to change from opaque to transparent at the location 19 where the bottles are stored and advantageously visually indicates where the bottles are to be placed by the user.

Fig. 6 illustrates a home appliance 10 according to an embodiment. The method steps performed by the household appliance 10 for highlighting the location of the food to be stored in the household appliance are in practice performed by the processing unit 18, the processing unit 18 being implemented in the form of one or more CPUs or microprocessors, arranged to execute a computer program 19 downloaded to a suitable volatile storage medium 21 (e.g. Random Access Memory (RAM)) or non-volatile storage medium (e.g. flash memory or hard disk drive) associated with the microprocessor. The processing unit 18 is arranged to cause the household appliance 10 to perform the method according to an embodiment of the invention, when an appropriate computer program 20 comprising computer executable instructions is downloaded to the storage medium 21 and executed by the processing unit 18. The storage medium 21 may also be a computer program product comprising the computer program 20. Alternatively, the computer program 20 may be transferred to the storage medium 21 by a suitable computer program product, such as a Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) or a memory stick. As another alternative, the computer program 20 may be downloaded to the storage medium 21 via a network. Alternatively, the processing unit 18 may also be embodied in the form of a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), a Complex Programmable Logic Device (CPLD), or the like.

Aspects of the present disclosure have been described with primary reference to several embodiments and examples thereof. However, as is readily appreciated by a person skilled in the art, other embodiments than the ones disclosed above are equally possible within the scope of the invention, as defined by the appended patent claims.

Thus, while various aspects and embodiments have been disclosed herein, other aspects and embodiments will be apparent to those skilled in the art. The various aspects and embodiments disclosed herein are for illustrative purposes and are not intended to be limiting, with the true scope and spirit being indicated by the following claims.

Claims

1. A method of highlighting the location of food to be stored in a household appliance (10), comprising:

-receiving (S101) an identifier configured to identify a food (13) to be stored in an appliance;

determining (S102) a location in the household appliance (10) where the identified food (13) is to be stored based on information associated with the received identifier; and

-controlling (S103) a glass door (14) of the household appliance (10) to determine, at the identified food (13), a position (19) to be stored from opaque to transparent.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein receiving an identifier comprises:

the identifier is acquired by scanning a bar code, a radio frequency identification tag, or a near field communication tag of the food including the identifier, or is extracted from the photographed image by photographing the image of the food and using image processing.

3. The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein determining the location where the identified foodstuff (13) is to be stored further comprises taking into account a storage instruction, which is preconfigured for the information associated with the received identifier.

4. The method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the foodstuff is a wine bottle (13) to be stored.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the information associated with the received bottle identifier indicates one or more of: the specific grape from which the wine is made, whether the wine is red or white, the size of the wine bottle (13), and from which area the wine comes.

6. The method according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the identifier is received through a wireless communication interface of the household appliance (10).

7. A computer program (20) comprising computer-executable instructions for causing a household appliance (10) to perform the steps as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 6 when the computer-executable instructions are executed on a processing unit (18) comprised in the household appliance (10).

8. A computer program product comprising a computer readable medium (21) having the computer program (20) according to claim 7 embodied thereon.

9. A household appliance (10) configured to highlight a location of food to be stored in the household appliance (10), the household appliance comprising a processing unit (18) configured to:

receiving an identifier configured to identify a food (13) to be stored in the appliance;

determining a location in the household appliance (10) where the identified food (13) is to be stored based on information associated with the received identifier; and

a glass door (14) of the household appliance (10) is controlled to determine, at the identified food (13), a position (19) to be stored from opaque to transparent.

10. The household appliance (10) according to claim 9, wherein the processing unit (18) is configured to: the identifier is received, the identifier is acquired by scanning a bar code, a radio frequency identification tag or a near field communication tag of the food including the identifier, or the identifier is acquired by a device which captures an image of the food and extracts the identifier from the captured image using image processing.

11. The household appliance (10) according to claim 9 or 10, wherein the processing unit (18) is configured to: having determined the location where the identified foodstuff (13) is to be stored, consider a storage instruction that is preconfigured for information associated with the received identifier.

12. Household appliance (10) according to any one of claims 9 to 11, wherein the foodstuff is a wine bottle (13) to be stored.

13. The household appliance (10) of claim 12, wherein the information associated with the received bottle identifier is configured to indicate one or more of: the specific grape from which the wine is made, whether the wine is red or white, the size of the wine bottle (13), and from which area the wine comes.

14. The household appliance (10) according to any one of claims 9 to 13, wherein the processing unit (18) is configured to receive the identifier through a wireless communication interface of the household appliance (10).

15. The household appliance (10) as claimed in any one of claims 9 to 14, wherein the household appliance (10) is a wine refrigerator.