WDIRC

1. Introduction

As we know the drawback of traditional rice cooker is that can’t run an automatic rice cooking process, a lot of problems on the automatic cooking process took by a traditional rice cooker that is listed as below.

1. No inner water supplying unit, this is important for an automatic cooking process, if without water supplying unit the cooking will be a semi-automatic cooking, it needs users themselves to put water into a pot for cooking, that’s harmful to develop an automatic cooking appliance.

2. Water supplying from outside to a large automatic rice cooker, to a currently automatic rice cooker, basically it uses an outside water supply for rice cooking and rinsing, this device is more complicated due to its design on water supply and drain. It’s not easy to set and install for house use, and the installation needs to consider the source and drain of water.

3. Needing a drain for rice washing water, basically before we make a cooking of rice that we need to wask and rinse rice, so all automatic cooking devices that need a water drain for draining waste water.

4. Rice, beans or cereals must be washed before cooking, resulting in overly complicated cooking procedures.

5. No existing automatic cooking devices (such as electric cookers, electronic pans), mostly semi-automatic rice cooking devices, lack of automatic water inlet design, it is difficult to automate the whole process.

6. Unable to set up automatic scheduling for more complicated cooking programs.

7. No cloud service platform provides remote control and food consumption records, the device is not easy for user manipulation and analysis of usage behavior (e.g. food use, time of use and fire status).

8. Can't colletct the data from user cooking behaviors, if without IOT connection the analysis of cooking behaviors can't be done and used well.

Therefore, based on these problems, a newest and creative cooking device was invented, that was a “Water Dispenser with Intelligent Rice Cooking (WDIRC)”, it’s named as “Automatic Cooking apparatus capable of supplying drinking water (ACA)”, also named as “Fully Automatic Intelligent Rice Cooker (Fully AIRC), This device was innovated by both inventers PingHua, Chang (BinVa, Chang) and TingYi, Tseng in the year 2008, That’s a newest smart appliance in a kitchen with IOT function. Why named as ACA or Automatic cooking device (ACD)? What difference is it between this and early cooking device? As you think, why the early device can’t cook rice with fully automatic? That’s due to the reason on the problem of rice rinsing, it needed a lot of water to be used in the rice rinsing, and with the water used, and it needs to be drained out from rinsing. So if we make an automatic rice cooker that needs to fulfil the requirements such as wash-free rice, water and rice storage tank. By these elements, a fully automatic rice cooker can be created and made. WDIRC combines a water supply unit, a food supply unit and a heating unit in one set, meanwhile the wash-free rice is used for this cooking device. Moreover, through the plan of electric circuit design, automatic program and wireless control on WDIRC, a remote control ACA could be easy achieved to implement the service of water dispenser and grain cooking. This is a newest invention on the history of ACA development especially in the rice cooker development. Wireless control, IOT technology and cloud service promote this device to be developed. Users can use a terminal device (such a cell-phone, a pad, a PC or a laptop) to command this device to complete the process of rice cooking, the records of command, consumption of rice or water, transaction or payment, they could be kept in clouds, we can analyze these records to provide further customized services. Moreover, when the material of food or water lacked in the storage tank, it can alert the message to the owner and through IOT-Ecommerce network to buy the material what it needed for cooking. It is a simply and useful smart rice cooker with function of water supplying.

2. Invention on a Smart IOT-Ecommerce appliance (WDIRC)

2.1 Innovation & Creativity, As we know the invention of toilet is the most important and innovative living product in the early 20th century. it solved a lot of private and public health problems. Today we created this great again, an intelligent automatic rice cooker with drinking water supply was created by PhD BinVa Chang, it solved the problem on daily rice cooking, "a smart rice cooking appliance", it also named as "WDIRC (water dispenser with intelligent rice cooker) , it facilitates the the cooking of rice by a remote and automatic control way without any man operations. By this way, it is easy to connect the cloud service and to provide a customize service for our clients.

2.2 WDIRC device (Patent protected), a best innovative and powerful cooking device in the world, it was invented by PhD. Chang since this idea to be concepted in 2008. Till now, why we cooked rice without automatic machine daily, is it not available or not necessary? trust me, we haven't it a fully automatic rice cooker to overcome the issue by now, and no good solution to be executed as we know. That's why Dr. BinVa to invent this smart appliance to us. The structure and scenario of WDIRC to be used as a smart cooker is shown in the figure 1 and 2, respectively.

The detail description of WDIRC is linked to the page of "introduction of WDIRC", that you can refer it over there.

2.3 IOT-Ecommerce model, a newest application combines the WDIRC into a cloud service with goods flow, business flow, money flow, service flow and information flow . The invention of WDIRC shapes the future of E-commerce on foods buying such as rice, bean, wheat, or grain. When the commands or responses enter into the cloud service, that data analysis can be done by the cloud analysis engine or algorithm, and then a personal service will be delivered through logistics. So the provider of foods or goods would be able to implement their marketing strategy to optimize the market share and size. How to benefit the development, that’s based on the infrastructure of information exchange, money flow and service delivery which progress to be had in houses. As we know the step of IOT application is closing to us, customization and personalization are the future of cooking style. By this change, the data and parameter can be store in the cloud for providing the customized and personalized services such as cooking time, cooking type, cooking amount, and cooking quality etc. Moreover, consumer experiences can engage in the supply chain of foods through this system. They can get a certain service from cloud suggestions based on their cooking favorites.

3. Main structure

The inner structure of WDIRC includes two parts. The one is the part of drink water dispenser, there are water storage tank, heater, controller, outlet, T-tube, pipe and valve etc.., the other part is the part of rice cooker, in structure it contains food storage tank, heater, controller, pipe and valve etc… It’s worth to note that for water storage in the tank, it is not only for external drinking water supply but also for internal rice cooking. Basically if water in tanks could provide both hot and cool water, whether provide hot or cool water supply, it depends on the requirement of user, if you wants to speed the cooking processes that it can provide hot water into the pot to short a cooking time. Normally by the addition of hot water, it can save both the time and energy of cooking process, and upgrade the performance of WDIRC. A featuring design was used in this device to separate the drinking and cooking water from a common water tank by using a T-tube in the outlet of water tank, the common use of supplying water in WDIRC needs to consider the arrangement of structure such as water flow design, electric valve control and programming, its control system is more complication than a single device. The other feature is the design of food storage tank, that can use a single tank design for storing rice, or uses a multiple tank design by partitioning the tank with separates. The design of multiple food tank can store many types of grain i.e. rice, beans, wheats even or flours, so the device of WDIRC can cook a combo meal by mixing different rice, bean or wheat for providing some special meals such as elder meal, baby meal and patient meal etc. The simple structure is shown in the figure 1 as below.

4. Functions

4.1 Water dispenser and rice cooker

Regarding the functions of WDIRC, basically it is not only providing functions of water dispenser and rice cooker but also scheduling or programming the cooking. For examples, if you want to cook beans such as red-bean, mung-bean, soybean or black soybean, it will be necessary to immerse for hours before cooking, so the wait to users is long. However if you use WDIRC to do same works, through the programming on cooking process, you can make an appointment or schedule to plan your cooking processes i.e. immersing, cooking, mixed cooking or braising, even to control the ratio of water and bean to achieve a rich water bean meal or poor water bean meal. Moreover cooking for a little rice is easy to get by an automatic process.

4.2 Food grinder

The other function of WDIRC is the grinder for grinding food material, it likes a food processor that can grind soybean or rice to be soybean milk or rice milk, respectively. Therefore to make a breakfast becomes more convenient than ever.

1. Just by simply pressing a button on the screen of App of a smart phone, to get coarse of fine grain powder in a short time.

2. It conveniently processes grains to powder which material such as rice, soybean, red bean, green bean or wheat etc.

3. Through to schedule the grinding process from App, users can make special meal with grain powder added for special eaters.

4.3 Blender

Furthermore if a stirrer is used in this device, it can help users to easy make cakes (i.e. rice cake, cake or bread), sometimes it also likes an automatic cake machine or bread machine. As we know the added of blender in WDIRC, that can break down foods or make smooth liquid substances from soft foods and liquids, this function is useful to make special meal for people can’t swallow solid foods, that by this function the fully liquid food can easy be made. Generally it likes a food processor, and uses interchangeable blades or disks rather than a fixed blade. By this way, users can process foods according to their cooking features by different blades.

5. Features

Six features of WDIRC is listed and described as below:

1. Using wash-free foods, it is used to be the cooking material such as wash-free rice, wash-free mung bean, and wash-free red bean, it removes the problem of drain out of waste water from a fully automatic rice cooker, and simplifies the process of rice cooking without washing and rinsing of rice. In the other words, it saves the cooking step, time and power.

2. Sharing water supply unit, a common use of water supply unit for cooking and drinking, it gives a lot of benefits such as both supply of drinking and cooking water saving the inner space of WDIRC, to speed the cooking process by supplying hot water if a hot water tank existed there, to remove the manual operation on water adding, and to easy estimate the consumption of water by one flow meter.

3. Saving the set space, normally the space it needs two sites to set two appliances, but by WDIRC it is necessary for one site only to set, and no special condition such as water supply or water drain to be considered for setting, it is easy to be put in anywhere in your space.

4. Solving the problem of quantification on rice cooking, normally for most modern family, a few people such as one or two lived with together is normal, however the rice cooking by a traditional cooker is a big problem especial in the quantification of rice amount for a chef, it’s difficult to keep the quality of rice cooking in this situation. So through the uses of WDIRC, an automatic cooking device by program control can precisely quantify the amount of food material by controlling water, food material, power and cooking time further to get a certain quality rice meal for a few people.

5. Changing the cooking process, to a non-regular cooking process, the program of cooking process can be set according to different food material, for example some bean material need to immerse for hours before cooking, that process can be scheduled in the cooking program, or the cooking process is a series action of heating, stewing, cooling or reheating, these steps can be pre-setting or pre-scheduling in a cooking program by an App of cell phone. Whatever, users can easy operate WDIRC to get the quality of rice meal based on their diet requirement.

6. Recording the diet daily, WDIRC it is an automatic cooking device with local and remote control, all of data including operation parameters, consumption of water or rice, and commands can be stored in cloud server, and access them by terminals (i.e. smart phone, laptop, PC or notepad etc.). These data can be analyzed and utilized for customizing the services to users or creating the market of IOT-Ecommerce to service providers.