Smart scenarios

Universal Home, a group of leading technology companies, is committed to ensuring a bright future. A design study in which glass-ceramic from SCHOTT is intelligently linked shows what innovative ideas for networked living could materialize by 2030.

Christine Fuhr

The dinner guests are still sitting comfortably at the table, laughing, chatting and playing games. ”Let's cook something,” says the good-humored host holding a tablet in his hand. By now it is obvious in the role play at the 2014 Universal Home Future Congress in Essen, Germany, that this is not an ordinary dinner table. It is also a working surface and the cozy center of the home. Multifunctional, smart and networked. Intuitively controllable via the tablet, the table on which the guests are busy preparing food suddenly becomes an intelligent surface, complete with a cooktop panel and a communication zone, networked components and multiple interfaces that even include home and building controls.

Individual ingredients of the meal are identified by sensors, and recipe ideas from the Internet are presented on the display. As soon as the smart home residents begin cooking, the smart desktop switches off the smoke detector and controls the ventilation system. The table and cookware are one unit, and the cooking utensil 2.0 enables precise temperature control. SCHOTT glass-ceramic offers comprehensive cooking convenience, as the multifunctional cooking table is equipped with induction technology that heats according to the recipe’s requirements. Milk doesn’t boil over any more. The moment the cookware is lifted from the cooktop panel, the cooking area can be used again as a working and usable space.