The future according to IFA
Including a fridge that follows you. Really.
It’s a cliché that smart fridges are a dumb idea – it’s a box to keep food cold, why does it need an Android tablet fixed to the front? So we can only wonder what Panasonic was thinking combining a smart fridge with a drone-on-wheels robot, for all those times you’ve wished the fridge would come to you.
Welcome to the future, according to IFA. The Berlin technology show saw waves of the usual launches – turn to p50 for our first-look reviews – but it wouldn’t be IFA without bonkers ideas for smart homes, complicated appliances, and many robots. Here’s my pick of the strangest, silliest and downright confusing future tech on show at Europe’s biggest technology expo.
What’s in this?
Appliances won’t be truly smart until they unlock the ability to look at something and understand it. For example, a fridge would be truly smart if it could tell you the tomatoes are about to go off or the milk has gone sour, and I would happily hand over money for the washing machine clever enough to figure I’d spilled red wine down the front of my top and knew the best way to get the stain out. The Bosch X-Spect suggests we’re getting there. This handheld scanner can tell what your shirt is made from, as well as measure the number of calories in a piece of fruit — and tell you when it’s gone off. That data is then transmitted to your smart appliance, meaning that your washing machine knows what settings to use. Unfortunately, the X-Spect remains a concept device for now.
Alexa in everything
Amazon’s voice assistant was crammed into everything from a vacuum robot (“Alexa! Clean up this mess!”) to a lawn mower (“Alexa! Do my chores!”) at IFA, but perhaps the most intriguing idea was a piano. Yamaha put its Clavinova pianos on show in Berlin, which have a tablet built in that can act as a music book or give lessons, as well as its Disklavier Enspire, which performs on its own like an old-time player piano. Through Yamaha’s MusicCast app for its speakers, it can also now be triggered via Amazon’s voice assistant (“Alexa, did I play that right?).”
Panasonic’s robot fridge
Robots will surely extend their reach from factories to our front rooms, but maybe not quite like this. Panasonic’s eye-catching concept fridge comes when you call it, or you can tap its touch controls to command it to follow you or return to its dock. In the kitchen. Where fridges belong. The technology that makes the “Movable Fridge” work is certainly an accomplishment, but I’m more impressed by Panasonic’s “Sustainable Maintainer”, a laundry machine that washes, dries and folds your clothes – now that’s solving a real problem.