At a time where binge watching TV series has become a norm, it only makes sense that you stay glued to your couch and such instances, if whenever you feel the need consume some cold drinks, Panasonic self-driving refrigerator seems like a no brainer. Unveiled at this year’s IFA, the self-moving refrigerator called ‘Ku’ is part of Panasonic’s vision of future lifestyles. It is not nearly as cool as R2-D2 serving your desired cold drinks, but it certainly has a lot more to drink and munch from since it is obviously larger. The fridge uses LIDAR, which incidentally Panasonic is already developing, as well as depth sensors to map your home.
What this means is, little Ku here is totally capable of avoiding unexpected obstacles (which clearly won’t be you, since you are stuck to the couch) in addition to whatever you have fixed around the home. To make sure you don’t need to even lift a finger to get the refrigerator to you, it is outfitted with voice recognition. With a simple yell of “Hi Ku” plus wherever you want it to go. It can’t get any more simpler than this, can it? Oh, wait. Perhaps, I shouldn’t have get your hopes up. Ku here is more of a sake, a popular Japanese rice wine, cooler and it is more sophisticated than roaming around your home like a Roomba because, it is actually a connected fridge.
It is connected to a brewery database that offers information about each bottle of sake inside which it then recommend dishes that will best go with each variant of sake. Neat. At least, you will have something to puke if you over intoxicate yourself. According to our source, Panasonic said Ku is designed with disabled people in mind, but with it serving up sake, it should be equally suited for lazy bums too. But before you get too excited by Ku, you ought to know it is still a prototype and it won’t be ready for your taking in another 5 or 6 years time. That’s a pretty long time for a relatively risk-free home appliance and with that as a bench mark, one can only imagine how long it will take for self-driving car to become a reality.
Images: Panasonic.
via Tech Insider.
