Using Smart Technology, a New Kind of Cooking Pot
What’s the Latest Development?
A British company wants to bring the cooking pot, a technology that has remained essentially unmodified for hundreds, if not thousands of years, into the present. The London-based design firm Precipice has created a new saucepan, called Simr, that uses smart technology to overcome the pitfalls of simple cookware: “A ‘smart handle’ (detachable if you need to put the pot in a dishwasher) has several modes to help prevent burning and boil-overs. The saucepan’s smart modes would include a timer, a weighing mechanism, a thermometer, and an alarm for when the pot boils over.”
What’s the Big Idea?
The company’s chief design manager, Miles Hawley, feels that the saucepan’s essential nature makes it ripe for technological improvement but that the cookware’s insistence on function will keep it safe from gimmicks and gizmos. “The saucepan is a fundamental tool used for a fundamental task,” said Hawley. “Every household has them, they are used on a daily basis and yet the design has hardly altered in hundreds if not thousands of years. Form, function, materials, ergonomics, storage and visual language have remained fundamentally unchanged since the Romans cast bronze and earthenware cooking vessels.”
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