Dreame's AI Smart Fridge Features Robotic Arm and Personalized Nutrition Tracking

Dreame's Smart Fridge Has a Robot Arm That Can Put Your Groceries Away for You

A refrigerator with a robotic arm inside of it that puts your groceries away for you was not on my bingo card. Yet, at Dreame's NEXT event in San Francisco on Tuesday, the company said that's one of its next big ideas. I'll believe it when I see it, of course, but we should still talk about it. Dreame is calling it the N1 Refrigerator, and it sounds fully unhinged. (Not the two French doors the company showed it with. I'm pretty sure those have hinges.) Watching an animation that the company displayed during its presentation, I was very confused as a digital person placed a full bag of groceries in the middle of the fridge's bottom shelf. "Well, that's an insane thing to do," I thought. Then, a robotic arm and hand I hadn't noticed before, folded up at the top of the fridge, descended into view and started pulling things out of the bag and putting them away, and my brain cracked a little. Some of the other features of the N1 include that it can dispense sparkling water, much like the FizzFresh Refrigerator Dreame announced earlier this year and that it said at its event today it plans to release a "Pro" version eventually. It also features mmWave sensing, so it knows when a human is nearby and, based on their body shape, can guess which person in the household it is. Mind you, the only indication that the N1 is a product the company is actually working on was a series of animated and still renders. Dreame didn't have an actual floor model of this refrigerator to show those of us at the event. In a press kit Dreame shared with me, the company says it will feature AI food recognition that will use "dual 8MP bionic cameras and a 32-channel hyperspectral sensor with a wavelength of 900-1700 nanometers" to identify and keep track of the various ingredients in your refrigerator. Dreame says its AI system "can identify up to 1,800 types of ingredients" and touts a 95% recognition accuracy "in ideal unobstructed environments." That's not just so you can ask the N1 what food is in your fridge. During its presentation, Dreame called the fridge "Your Family Health Center" and said it can synchronize with health devices like smartwatches and smartphones. The company says the N1 will feature on-device AI and that using your personal information, the fridge can make recommendations based on your activity. For example, it might suggest drinking water after a workout. It'll also provide metrics like your heart rate or body fat. One slide hinted at the kinds of things its system can do, like predict your weight change trends. My own fridge, a Samsung Bespoke model, sports an internet connection, and I can use the SmartThings app to do things like set it to prioritize making ice for me. That's fine; I'm good with that. I don't know about you, but I sure don't want my refrigerator to look over what I have in my fridge, consider my health and activity data, and make recommendations to me. It's not just that AI isn't always great at identifying food. It's that I really don't want my refrigerator predicting my weight trends, and I'd sure rather not face the possibility of my fridge essentially saying to me (probably not using these words), "Hey fatty, you should cool it on the pastrami."

This smart fridge scans your food and your fingerprints to give you personalized nutrition advice -- but I'm not sure I want judgemental appliances in my kitchen

Dreame's concept fridge is cool and alarming in equal measure * Dreame demonstrated a concept fridge at its showcase in San Francisco * It uses AI to scan and sort your food, with a robotic arm to organize items * It also scans your smartwatch and fingerprints to recognize you, and give you personalized nutrition advice Maybe it's because I'm in the process of buying a home and looking to buy my own appliances for the first time, but Dreame's high-tech refrigerator with AI-powered nutrition tracking isn't just one of the best things I've seen so far at the Dreame Next product showcase -- it's also the most unsettling. I'm here in San Francisco to get a glimpse at all of the smart home tech the brand is developing, and although Dreame has showed this futuristic fridge before, I'm particularly interested in the way it uses your health data. The fridge itself sounds pretty impressive, with a robotic arm that will properly sort your food into appropriate chambers, cameras that will track your food's freshness, and an AI system to help you find recipes to use items before they decay. There's also a water dispenser that can carbonate your water to serve it sparkling. However, I'm more intrigued by the way it determines who's opening it by scanning your face, fingerprints, or smart wearables. Once it knows who you are, it can use health data from your scales, smart watch, or smart ring -- plus the info on what's in your fridge -- to find recipes that'll help you hit your health targets. This is all apparently handled privately through a collaboration with Google Cloud, allowing the fridge to identify over 10,000 ingredients with an over 97% accuracy, and not compromising your personal information when offering eating tips. It's all fascinating, but I'm not sure I want a judgemental fridge sitting in my kitchen. Nor do I love the idea of it having my biometric information, or my health data, even if it could arguably help my eating habits. Dreame doesn't have a price or release date for this fridge, but even as just a concept, it does seem like the way smart home tech will evolve as brands like Dreame and Samsung promote AI-fuelled interconnectedness between our various gadgets. Hopefully the final form of this integration won't feel invasive -- otherwise I might want to stick with as dumb a fridge as I can possibly find. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds.