Cooking
Dinner at Home—From the Office
Consumer/Home/Recreation
Originating Technology/ NASA Contribution
It is well past quitting time, but you are still stuck
in the office. Your spouse left work over an hour ago,
but is caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic. As a result,
neither of you were available to pick up your daughter
on time from her soccer game. If your son hadn’t gotten
detention at school today—which also made him late
for work—he could have picked her up.
The next thing you know, it is already 8:30 at night,
and your family members are finally all together under
the same roof. No one has had a bite to eat since lunch,
and dinner certainly isn’t going to cook itself…or
is it?
For those who are all too familiar with this situation,
it might be time to welcome the oven of the future
into your homes: the ConnectIo Intelligent Oven, brought
to you by TMIO, LLC, of Cleveland. Applying the same
remote command and control concepts that NASA uses
to run experiments on the International Space Station
(ISS), ConnectIo allows its owners to cook dinner from
the road, via a cell phone, personal digital assistant,
or Internet connection.
Partnership
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By combining remote-access
technology with the capability to both cook and
refrigerate food, TMIO, LLC, has eliminated the
“wait time” of cooking. |
In 1994, David Mansbery was at the helm of an active family whose schedule rarely allowed for home-cooked meals. Growing tired of frequent fast-food dinners, Mansbery set out to bring traditional, home-cooked dinners back into his home. At the time, Mansbery was president of a natural gas supply company, and NASA’s Glenn Research Center was one of his biggest clients.
When Mansbery pitched his idea of a hot-and-cold, remotely operated oven to Glenn, the NASA center lined him up with a group of its engineers that had worked on the ISS Electric Power System, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) that studied the Sun, the Cassini spacecraft that is currently visiting Saturn, and several experiments that flew on the Space Shuttle. These engineers supplied Mansbery with “Embedded Web Technology” software that was developed at Glenn in 1996. According to its inventors, Embedded Web Technology marries embedded systems (hardware or software that forms a component of a larger system and is expected to operate without human intervention) and the World Wide Web, to let a user monitor and/or control a remote device with an embedded system over the Internet, using a convenient, graphical user interface. In contrast to general purpose desktop computers, embedded systems contain processors, software, input sensors and output actuators—all of which are dedicated to the control of a specific device.
NASA counts on Embedded Web Technology to allow astronauts to operate experiments from anywhere on the ISS, using any laptop computer available to them. This way, NASA can operate its experiments without having to install user-interface software on all of the laptop computers for every space-bound instrument. To date, an estimated $150 million has been saved by use of this software to control Space Station payloads.
With authorization to use
the Embedded Web Technology, Mansbery formed the TMIO
company to execute his idea. The NASA software enabled
low-cost, real-time remote control and monitoring of
the resulting intelligent oven product.
Product Outcome
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Astronaut
Daniel Burbank, mission
specialist for STS-106,
uses a laptop computer
to keep up with busy
chores onboard the Space
Shuttle Atlantis. Embedded
Web Technology, developed
at Glenn Research Center,
allows astronauts to
monitor and operate International
Space Station experiments
from remote positions,
just as it lets owners
of the ConnectIo
Intelligent Oven cook
meals—away from home. |
With combined cooling and
heating capabilities, TMIO’s ConnectIo stainless-steel professional
series oven provides convenience and healthy living
for today’s active lifestyles. Before leaving for
work, consumers can place fresh food in ConnectIo,
where it will remain properly refrigerated until
a programmable cooking cycle begins; the oven is
preprogrammed with a universal cooking menu, which
can be customized to the user’s preferences. The
menu allows the user to simply enter in the dinner
time, and the oven automatically switches from refrigeration
to the cooking cycle, so that the meal will be ready
as the family arrives home for dinner.
Should plans change, the embedded software enables
the user to conveniently and instantaneously adjust
and control the oven settings while away from home,
via a cell phone, personal digital assistant, or the
Internet. This includes re-refrigeration, warming for
a completed meal, and any temperature or time modifications
that need to be made on the fly.
ConnectIo’s unique two-cavity design offers independent
cooling and cooking of two separate dishes. For instance,
chicken can be placed in the top compartment and potatoes
in the bottom. Each dish cools and cooks according
to its own instructions.
Built-in Ethernet capabilities allow for a seamless
connection of ConnectIo to the outside world, so additional
wiring is not required. The oven also features touch
screen controls that integrate into flat panels around
the house, allowing for a sophisticated and practical
way to see if dinner is ready without having to
leave a room, or perhaps miss a part of a favorite
television show, to check on the oven. Furthermore,
TMIO asserts that ConnectIo’s advanced structural design
leads to safer and more energy-efficient cooking and
self-cleaning cycles.
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From a remote location,
the ConnectIo Intelligent Oven can be
programmed to automatically switch from refrigeration
to the cooking cycle, so that the meal will be
ready as the family arrives home for dinner. |
The technology was recognized as one
of TIME magazine’s “Coolest Inventions” for 2003,
as Reader’s Digest’s “Best of America” for 2004,
and honored with the 2004 “Best of Innovations” award
by the Consumer Electronics Association. It has made
numerous television appearances on programs like
CNBC’s “Power Lunch,” “Good Morning America,” “The
View,” and ESPN’s “Cold Pizza,” as well as A&E
Television Network’s “At Home with the Brave,” a
show that offers home-renovation remedies to soldiers
returning from Iraq and Afghanistan; TMIO contributed
a ConnectIo oven to a deserving
soldier and his family, who were featured on the
program. TMIO has also announced its engagement
of a Beverly Hills-based product placement firm to
help bring ConnectIo to prime time television and Hollywood
movie sets.
Built from NASA technology, one-too-many nights
of fast food, and some forward-thinking inspired
by the cartoon, “The Jetsons” (TMIO openly admits
to this influence), ConnectIo has revolutionized
the cooking industry and brought the family back
together for dinner.
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