By Jiang Nan, People’s Daily
Today, smart home devices are increasingly popularized, bringing much more convenience to people’s daily life. New technologies, investment, and business forms in the smart home industry are thus keys to transforming and upgrading China’s traditional industries.
The new demands of consumers are what encourage traditional industries to make a change.
“We have gradually turned from a manufacturer of traditional lighting products into a provider of comprehensive and intelligent lighting solutions,” said Nan Junxia, head of CHINT, China’s leading intelligent energy solutions provider.
The company has launched intelligent sockets that can directly replace the old ones and innovative home control panels and sensors that can be placed anywhere. With the products offered by the company, the brightness and colors of lights can be controlled remotely on mobile phones.
Besides, the company has also developed a home-based intelligent nursing system that monitors the safety of seniors in real time through innovative integrated circuits and sensors. The plan would inform seniors’ families or medical personnel immediately after it detects tumbles or lasting inactivity.
“Mr. ROKI, stir fry, please,” said Lin Xiaojia, user experience engineer with the cooking research center of Robam Appliances, a Chinese firm specializing in manufacturing household kitchen appliances.
Soon, an automatic range hood started working, and the man selected a home-style dish on a color display that read “cloud recipe.” He turned on an intelligent kitchen stove, automatically adjusting the flame according to Lin’s selected dish. Then an “unattended wok” began stirring the ingredients in it. The temperature in the wok and a timer were displayed on a screen on the cover of the wok.
A significant difference between the ROKI digital kitchen appliances and traditional kitchen appliances is the “Mr. ROKI,” an AI assistant that connects different sets in the kitchen and thus creates new scenarios through inter-device collaboration.
In a “future factory” of Robam Appliances in the Linping district of Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang province, researchers have turned recipes into digital curves based on varying ingredients’ mouthfeels and nutrition in different temperatures and cooking methods. It is learned that thousands of digital recipes have been developed for ROKI digital kitchen appliances, making cooking much easier for users and helping them create digital recipes that can be shared with more people.
The transformation and upgrading of home appliance manufacturers rely on the joint efforts and collaborative innovation of all enterprises along the industrial chain.
Robam Appliances has developed a high-definition camera module with fisheye and wide-angle lens in cooperation with an optical company, which serves as an “eye” for the “unattended works” and intelligent combi ovens. The camera offers recommendations based on the ingredients it recognizes and observes the variation of ingredients’ colors to avoid overcooking.
Besides, the Chinese manufacturer of household kitchen appliances also joined hands with a tech firm in Shenzhen to develop an infrared thermometer module that controls the switch and ventilation of range hoods and innovative stoves based on temperature variation.
Sensors, integrated circuits, controller developers, and other enterprises upstream of the industry have reaped fruitful results in their cooperation with manufacturers of smart home devices. Lower-stream enterprises are also working to build relevant platforms, systems, and comprehensive solutions.
Several smart home devices are exhibited in an experience center of CHINT, including automatic door locks, intelligent air conditioning systems, and innovative shower systems.
Enterprises in the industry have independently developed innovative home ecology platforms, constantly extending intelligent home products and services relying on the Internet of Things, big data, and smart technologies.
According to statistics, the Chinese smart home market jumped from 260 billion yuan ($36.25 billion) to 580 billion yuan from 2016 to 2021, with an average annual growth of nearly 20 percent. The smart home industry of Zhejiang province alone is expected to hit 500 billion yuan in 2025.
