Coochen-KEA to Help Small and Medium Enterprises Enter IoT Market with IoT Appliance Modules
Temperature sensors, weight sensors, and touch LCD installation for smart cooking

"Kitchen appliances have many analog aspects, so simply embedding IoT doesn't make them IoT appliances. There are limitations in providing convenience as a standalone product. Customers also show negative reactions regarding the benefits when connected via WiFi."

Park Mi-jeong, part manager at Coochen, who attended the System-Semiconductor Forum breakfast seminar held in Yangjae on the 20th, said this.

With the boom in artificial intelligence and IoT, "smart appliances" are increasing among home appliances. As the growth of the domestic smart home market is anticipated, large companies such as Samsung and LG Electronics are focusing on smart homes. LG Smart Home connects a hub robot or SmartThinQ Hub 2.0 with appliances such as refrigerators, washing machines, robot vacuums, and air purifiers via WiFi, enabling users to use and control functions.

Small appliance manufacturers face limitations in independently building IoT implementation platforms since they produce a limited variety of appliances and customers frequently use products from other companies in combination. Coochen, which manufactures electric rice cookers and electric ranges, is currently researching an open-source hardware platform and seeking ways to connect with products from other companies.

Park Mi-jeong said, "We are developing an open-source hardware platform for IoT appliances with the Korea Electronics and Information Communications Industry Promotion Agency (KEA)," and announced plans to foster an ecosystem for small and medium-sized enterprises to enter the IoT market through the development of modules for smart home IoT appliances.

Coochen is also making efforts in sensor development to plan its own IoT products. Park noted, "In Korean cuisine, the range of temperatures used in food varies widely from low to high temperatures," and mentioned that they are expanding the scope of sensors that measure subtle temperature variations.

She explained, "Through accurate temperature sensors, we will be able to improve the quality of cooking not only in high-temperature frying pan and deep-frying dishes that were previously done in high-temperature ranges, but also in low-temperature cooking such as porridge and steaming through precise temperature control."

Additionally, weight sensors are being developed to determine the location of cooking utensils. Touch LCD will also be installed to display the location and cooking method of utensils. Park said, "Domestic products do not yet have touch LCD installed. We are planning a launch around May next year," and added, "We are attempting to convert recipes into MP3 files. We plan to use this to enable automatic cooking on electric ranges."

Coochen sees the potential to pioneer new markets with smart cooking solutions to improve customer cooking convenience. To this end, the company plans to equip appliances with sensors and system semiconductors, enable machine-to-machine communication through communication networks, and collect data to the operating system. The collected data will be used to provide intelligent services in connection with big data.

Park said, "By combining sensors, control, and monitoring, within 20 years an ecosystem will be implemented based on artificial intelligence that can analyze user patterns and propose 'what to eat today,'" she explained.