Page 24 - EE Times Europe March 2022

24 EE|Times EUROPE

PARTNER CONTENT
Thermal Imaging for Smart Homes

By Hasan Gadjali, Co-Founder and COO, and Dr. Markov Stanislav Nikolaev, Scientist, Meridian Innovation Ltd.

Figure 1: Cooksy-Pro is the world’s first intelligent cooking assistant. (Source: Cooksy Corp.)

BEYOND A SINGLE PIXEL people at the doorbell” but how many and identifying elevated temperatures that may
Many home appliances and devices promise to who). The application of visual image sensors lead to fire long before the hazard conditions
make our homes safer and more comfortable, in smart robots and home security systems is set in.
save us time, or make our lives easier. They already broad. Now, evolution of the technol- A natural way of providing thermal imaging
automate trivial tasks or make the controls ogy is bringing other multipixel sensors to the in the kitchen is by integrating the sensor
of such devices available at our fingertips arena of home automation and smart homes. within the extractor hood to realize a cooktop
through connectivity to our mobile phones. Thermal imaging sensors are the prime monitor. Cooksy-Pro, shown in Figure 1, is
This functionality is enabled by a plethora candidates, with prospects for such tasks as the world’s first intelligent cooking assistant
of digital sensors, ranging from devices that preventing fire hazards and guiding cooks in product. In the figure, Cooksy-Pro is the
measure air temperature, humidity, and light the kitchen, monitoring human occupancy copper-colored device mounted under the
conditions to motion detectors, gas sensors, without sacrificing privacy, measuring our extractor hood. From that vantage point,
and more. From the perspective of the infor- comfort level, and remotely ensuring the the thermal imager can continuously “see”
mation that such sensors provide, they have well-being of infants and the elderly. the temperature distribution on the entire
one thing in common: They are pointwise Below, we look at a few specific cases. cooktop or stove.
and lack spatial resolution. For example, a Many culinary ingredients are sensitive to
conventional temperature or a light sensor YOUR SAFER AND SMARTER KITCHEN the temperature at which they are processed.
would report the temperature or the light Why thermal imaging in the kitchen? Overheating them may not only deplete their
intensity only at the point of installation in The short answer is for safety, health, and nutritional value but even turn them into
a room. No awareness of the people in the convenience. Indeed, according to the U.S. less-than-friendly compounds for our bodies.
room, their actions, or their level of comfort National Fire Protection Association (NPFA), A thermal imager above the cooktop can
can be inferred from such sensors. cooking is the leading cause of domestic fires, “read” a cooking meal’s temperature continu-
In contrast, visual imaging sensors have accounting for 49% of such incidents. Not all ously and indicate it to us, thereby helping us
very fine spatial resolution, delivered by the the affected households had a malfunctioning produce healthier meals.
millions of detectors integrated in the sensor. smoke detector; rather, by the time the smoke “This leads us to the concept of a culinary
In that way, they generate rich, unstruc- was detected, it was too late to eliminate assistant, helping you to create healthy and
tured information, upon which visual image the conditions leading to the fire. Thermal delicious meals every time,” said Steven
analytics are applied to obtain structured imaging can provide a clear path to minimiz- Cartwright, CFO of Cooksy Corp. “In its
information (for example, not just “there are ing such costly and devastating accidents by essence, Cooksy enables you to share your

MARCH 2022 | www.eetimes.eu