CN112369122B - Method for operating a cooking appliance - Google Patents

Abstract

A method for operating a cooking appliance, the method comprising: (a) Providing a database having operating parameters of the cooking appliance; (b) obtaining recipe data from a recipe source; (c) Extracting cooking process parameters from the obtained recipe data; (d) Determining an adjusted cooking parameter by evaluating the extracted cooking process parameter according to data from the database and optionally settings made by a user; and (e) operating the cooking appliance based on the adjusted cooking parameter.

Description

Method for operating a cooking appliance

The present invention relates to a method for operating a cooking appliance.

In performing a cooking process, a user must enter a number of cooking process parameters, such as temperature or power level and duration, on the cooking appliance. Depending on the type of cooking appliance employed, the user must also select various other parameters, such as the size and shape of the cooking area selected for heating in the hob, or the program selected in the oven, the type of heating (such as convection heating, top heating and/or bottom heating) and the addition of steam.

While there are many online databases available for recipes for various foods, when one wishes to put a recipe into practice, the user must adjust the details of the recipe to suit a particular situation, such as the number of portions to be cooked, and then must adjust the cooking parameters to suit the particular cooking appliance being used.

In EP1041860A2, a microwave oven is proposed which can communicate with a trunk which also communicates with a personal computer. The personal computer may be connected via the internet to a host computer storing a plurality of cooking recipes comprising control data for heating and cooking the cooking recipes by means of the microwave oven, which control data may be transmitted to the microwave oven.

The method proposed in EP1041860A2 is disadvantageous in that the user may not be able to search for recipes freely on the internet, but is limited to recipes specifically designed for microwave ovens. Furthermore, the method proposed in EP1041860A2 does not take into account the specific factors of the cooking appliance used, i.e. it does not take into account that different cooking results may be achieved when different cooking appliances use the same cooking process parameters.

In view of the above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method for operating a cooking appliance, which method facilitates the cooking process and in particular facilitates the application of recipe instructions to the specific cooking appliance used.

The above object is solved by the present invention, which provides a method for operating a cooking appliance, comprising:

(a) Providing a database having operating parameters of the cooking appliance;

(b) Obtaining recipe data from a recipe source;

(c) Extracting cooking process parameters from the obtained recipe data;

(d) Determining an adjusted cooking parameter by evaluating the extracted cooking process parameter according to data from the database and optionally settings made by a user; and

(e) The cooking appliance is operated based on the adjusted cooking parameter.

In this method, a database is provided in which data for a particular cooking appliance is stored. Such data preferably includes the type of cooking appliance, the manner of heating (such as convection heating in an oven, steaming, microwave heating, etc.), and user preferences. In addition to such general operational data, the data in the database preferably contains data of various cooking operations, which can be used as basic data or comparison data of a specific cooking operation to be performed. As will be explained in further detail below, the database is preferably continuously updated, especially by using a so-called artificial intelligence machine learning algorithm, so that by repeatedly applying such an algorithm, the system is able to continuously learn, improve and optimize cooking programs that are performed in a specific cooking appliance, and also take into account the preferences of a specific user.

Prior to starting the cooking procedure recipe data is obtained from a recipe source, which may be in particular an online source, such as a website with a cooking recipe, a cooking video, etc.

After recipe data is obtained, cooking process parameters such as oven temperature and cooking time are extracted from the obtained data.

The extracted cooking process parameters are evaluated by using data from the database and optionally also taking into account settings made by the user to determine adjusted cooking parameters that are particularly suited for a particular cooking appliance and a particular user. That is, if the cooking appliance is a steam oven (information of which is stored in a database), the recipe selected might be, for example, six meals in a convection oven, and if the user provides input that four meals are to be prepared, the cooking process parameters are automatically recalculated for this particular case.

After the adjusted cooking parameters are thus determined, the cooking appliance is then operated based on these adjusted parameters.

The present invention thus provides a method for operating a cooking appliance in which recipe data is obtained from a recipe source such as an online source and then automatically adjusted to suit a particular cooking appliance, wherein the ability to continuously adjust and optimize a cooking program is provided by employing a database that can be continuously fed with data tailored to the particular cooking appliance and to user preferences, thereby finding ideal settings such as temperature, duration and oven program tailored to the particular appliance of the consumer.

Preferred embodiments are defined in the dependent claims.

In order to provide learning ability to gradually improve the database to better adapt the stored cooking process parameters to the specific factors of the cooking appliance and the preferences of the user, the method preferably further comprises recording operational data of the cooking process and storing the recorded data (optionally after further processing) in the database.

Thus, in prior art methods and systems, the user has to manually enter settings for the cooking appliance, wherein to optimize the cooking process, the user would need to manually track the previously used recipes; in a preferred embodiment of the method, wherein the operational data of the cooking process is recorded, optionally further processed, and then stored in a database, the database is thus automatically adapted to the preferences of the user.

To achieve the desired oven setting, the method preferably includes applying a machine learning algorithm to the recorded operational data and storing the data obtained by the machine learning algorithm in a database. Thus, the recorded operational data, which in addition to the cooking process parameters also comprises recipe data, is preferably used to adjust, expand and improve the already stored data. Although the database may be trained using a number of existing recipes, particularly in the initial stage, the recipes may be further analyzed using a machine learning method in which imported recipes are compared with existing recipes using recipe knowledge collected in the database and proposed recommended settings based on key indicators.

In order to adapt the recipe data to the personal preferences of the user, the method may further comprise querying the user for cooking process parameters based on determining the adjusted cooking parameters. That is, when the method establishes a set of recommended settings, the method may provide the user with an opportunity to modify those settings according to personal preferences. For example, if the method is used to operate a cooking appliance for grilling meat, the user may be required to select between the options "triple-cooked", "quarter-cooked", "fifth-cooked" and "full-cooked".

In a preferred embodiment of the method, the user is presented with cooking process parameters based on the determination of the adjusted cooking parameters. That is, the user may be presented with parameters that affect the adjustment of the cooking parameters that have been retrieved, so that the user can check whether further adjustment is needed.

The methods presented herein may be particularly advantageously employed when determining the adjusted cooking parameters includes converting cooking parameters applicable to the first heating method into adjusted cooking parameters for the second heating method.

For example, if the cooking appliance is a steam oven, the user is not limited to searching for a steam oven recipe, but may use, for example, a convection oven recipe whose cooking parameters are thus converted to be suitable for the steam oven. Thus, the options for recipes are greatly expanded and erroneous operation of cooking appliances based on unsuitable recipes is avoided.

Recipe sources may include any source from which recipe data may be obtained, such as internet sources, in particular online databases with recipes, cooking websites, online audio, video or text sources, audio signals (such as radio broadcast signals or microphone signals), video signals (such as television programs) or OCR readable text.

The method in the step of obtaining recipe data involves at least one of web page crawling, speech recognition, image recognition, and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) in accordance with a recipe source. Thus, the method is not limited to accessing a database containing recipe data that has been tailored to a specific cooking appliance, but any kind of data retrieval may be used by which cooking process parameters may be extracted from signals obtained by a recipe source.

In order to obtain detailed information about the type and amount of ingredients to be used, the actions to be taken, the parameters to be set, the cookware to be used, etc., step (c) of extracting cooking process parameters from the obtained recipe data preferably involves the step of parsing the obtained recipe data, i.e. analyzing and grammatically parsing the obtained recipe data.

Recipe data may include any data that is needed or may be helpful in determining optimal cooking process parameters and performing such cooking processes. Thus, recipe data may include data regarding: the type of ingredients, the total volume and/or weight of each ingredient or any subset of ingredients, the number of parts, the type of cooking appliance, the heating mode, the type of cooking (e.g., roast, fried, steamed, slow cook, etc.), the style of cooking (e.g., italian style, french style, kam style, mexico style, etc.), the type of cooking container and/or fitment used, the predefined cooking program, and the various cooking parameters (e.g., temperature time profile, duration of the cooking step, and size and shape of the cooking area).

Although the method of the present invention may be so performed in a cooking appliance, in a preferred embodiment steps (a) to (d) are performed in a remote device which communicates continuously and/or on demand with the cooking appliance, the adjusted cooking parameters are transmitted from the remote device to the cooking appliance, and optionally settings of the cooking appliance made by the user are transmitted to the remote device.

In such preferred embodiments, the remote device may be a personal device, such as a mobile phone, tablet, notebook, personal computer, or smart home system, or alternatively, the remote device may be a multi-user database system operated remotely by a service provider. Thus, although the entire process of obtaining recipe data, extracting cooking process parameters from the obtained recipe data, and determining adjusted cooking parameters by evaluating the extracted cooking process parameters may all be performed on a personal device, these steps may also all be performed remotely by a service provider, wherein the personal device only serves as an interface for communicating with a remote service, i.e. for a user to input data and display data to the user.

In such an embodiment, the method may be implemented as an application running on a personal device (e.g., a mobile phone) of the user, for example, for searching for a recipe, wherein after the user determines a recipe source containing the appropriate recipe data, the mobile phone may send a corresponding request to a remote service, which then obtains the recipe data and processes such data to generate a set of appropriate cooking process parameters, which are sent from the remote service to the user or directly to the cooking appliance. Likewise, the data processing may be performed partially or completely in the cooking appliance itself, in a separate device in communication with the cooking appliance, and/or through a remote service.

In view of the above, a cooking appliance configured for use in the method of the present invention may in the simplest case comprise only a communication interface allowing operating parameters generated on a remote service, such as a personal device or a remote device, to be sent to the cooking appliance so that the cooking appliance may be operated based on such parameters.

In a further complex embodiment, the communication interface is a bi-directional interface allowing the transmission of operating parameters from the cooking appliance to a remote device in order to provide feedback to the remote device of the actually implemented cooking process. Such feedback data may be used in a self-learning method to optimize and personalize similar future cooking operations.

While in such embodiments the user interface (i.e. data input by the user and presentation of data to the user) may be implemented in a separate device such as a mobile phone, in other embodiments the cooking appliance is equipped with a user interface, such as a touch screen panel, which allows the user to input a recipe search request, select a desired recipe and display various data to the user. In such embodiments, access to the online source may be provided by a direct connection via a corresponding communication interface provided at the cooking appliance, or by configuring the cooking appliance to communicate with a network, such as a home communication network via a LAN or a WALN.

Thus, there are various levels of integration of the communication and processing means into the cooking appliance, which is equally applicable to a memory means for storing a database with operating parameters of the cooking appliance, which memory means may thus be provided in at least one of the cooking appliances, in a separate personal device, such as a mobile phone, in a remote device or at a remote service provider.

Claims (16)

1. A method for operating a cooking appliance, the method comprising the steps of:

a) Providing a database having operating parameters of the cooking appliance;

b) Obtaining recipe data from a recipe source;

c) Extracting cooking process parameters from the obtained recipe data;

d) Determining adjusted cooking parameters by evaluating the extracted cooking process parameters according to data from the database; and

e) Operating the cooking appliance based on the adjusted cooking parameter,

characterized in that the method further comprises:

operational data of the cooking process is recorded and the recorded data is stored in the database,

wherein determining the adjusted cooking parameter comprises converting the cooking parameter applicable to the first heating method into an adjusted cooking parameter for use in the second heating method.

2. The method of claim 1, the method further comprising:

a machine learning algorithm is applied to the recorded operation data, and data obtained by the machine learning algorithm is stored in the database.

3. The method of claim 1 or 2, the method further comprising: the user is queried for cooking process parameters based on determining the adjusted cooking parameters.

4. The method of claim 1 or 2, the method further comprising: the user is presented with cooking process parameters based on determining the adjusted cooking parameters.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein,

evaluating the extracted cooking process parameters based on data from the database and settings made by the user, and/or

The recorded data is stored in the database after further processing.

6. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein the recipe source comprises an internet source, an audio signal, a video signal, or OCR readable text.

7. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein step b) involves at least one of web crawling, speech recognition, image recognition, and optical character recognition, OCR.

8. A method as claimed in claim 1 or 2, wherein step c) involves parsing the obtained recipe data to extract cooking process parameters.

9. The method of claim 1 or 2, wherein the recipe data comprises data about: the type of ingredients, the volume and/or weight of each ingredient, the number of parts, the type of cooking appliance, the heating pattern, the type of cooking vessel, the predefined cooking program, and each cooking parameter.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein each cooking parameter comprises: temperature, temperature time profile, duration of cooking step, and size and shape of cooking area.

11. The method according to claim 1 or 2, wherein steps a) to d) are performed in a remote device, the method further comprising transmitting the adjusted cooking parameter to the cooking appliance.

12. The method of claim 11, in which the extracted cooking process parameters are evaluated based on data from the database and settings made by a user, and the settings of the cooking appliance made by the user are sent to the remote device.

13. The method of claim 11, wherein the remote device is a personal device.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the personal device comprises: mobile phones, tablet computers, notebook computers, personal computers or smart home systems.

15. The method of claim 11, wherein the remote device is a multi-user database system operated by a service provider.

16. A cooking appliance configured for use in the method of any one of claims 1 to 15.