Panasonic Smart Refrigerators With AI Camera Help People Cook Smarter and Shop Better While Reducing Food Waste

At CEATEC 2024, Panasonic showcased its AI vision-powered refrigerator, which was launched in Japan in the Spring/Summer of 2024. This AI-driven refrigerator features intelligent food management technology that improves people’s lives while reducing food waste. Equipped with an integrated external AI camera, this smart fridge can recognize up to 45 types of vegetables, track their freshness, and recommend recipes using ingredients nearing their best-before date. Connected to the Live Pantry app, users can check their fridge contents remotely*, preventing forgotten or duplicate purchases.

In addition to its advanced smart features, the refrigerator includes the “W-Shaki-Shaki (means Double Crispy) Crisper Drawer Plus,” which optimizes humidity levels to keep vegetables crisp for 7 days, supporting better food preservation. This AI and IoT integration offers a streamlined solution for shopping and meal planning, easing users’ decision-making while promoting sustainability by minimizing food waste and helping people consume fresh foods before they spoil.

Panasonic “Refrigerator AI Camera” With Two Smart Cameras And Live Pantry App, How Does It Work?

See Inside The Refrigerator, Cold Compartment, Vegetable (Crisp) Drawer, and Freezer Drawer.

The “Panasonic Refrigerator AI Camera” offers a unique, detailed view of refrigerator contents, using two cameras—one wide-angle lens at the front center and a narrow-angle telephoto lens on the front left. Each time the refrigerator door is opened, the wide-angle camera captures the interior shelves and door pockets, while the narrow-angle camera photographs the vegetable and freezer drawers every time they’re opened.

Panasonic’s AI system uses markers to identify both the upper and lower cases of the vegetable and freezer drawers. The company claims its technology is the only one capable of providing a full view of these compartments and accurately identifying their inner sections.

Images captured by the cameras take a few minutes to appear in the Live Pantry companion app. When the doors open at least 90 degrees, and the drawers are fully extended, the system provides a clear view of the refrigerator’s contents, though some areas, like partial-chilled sections and certain door pockets, may be out of frame. This innovative system allows users to monitor stored items conveniently through the app.

Computer Vision Identifies And Monitors 45 Vegetables In The Vegetable Drawer

Panasonic’s innovative refrigerator technology utilizes an AI-powered camera to capture and identify 45 types of vegetables in the “Double Crispy” vegetable drawer. The system recognizes various produce, including carrots, broccoli, bok shoi,spinach, enoki mushrooms, and komatsuna. It identifies vegetables by shape and appearance, even if cut, with an unfamiliar shape or similar in form, such as spinach and bok choi. The system records the storage date for each vegetable at snapshot time. This data is transmitted to the Live Pantry app, which organizes vegetables by freshness, prioritizing items closer to expiration. Users can also manually add other ingredients, complete with expiration dates, to help ensure a comprehensive overview of all stored items.

AI-Powered Recipe Suggestions to Reduce Food Waste and Improve People’s Shopping Efficiency

Building on this freshness tracking, the AI offers recipe and daily menu suggestions to help reduce food waste and streamline meal planning. Leveraging recorded storage dates, the Live Pantry app recommends recipes using ingredients nearing expiration. This feature not only supports sustainable consumption by reducing food waste but also simplifies meal preparation and shopping management. With timely recipe recommendations based on remaining ingredients, users can efficiently plan meals and shopping trips, making the refrigerator a helpful partner in food management.

Panasonic’s Double Crispy (W-Shaki-Shaki) Feature for the Vegetable Drawer – Extends To 7 Days Of Freshness.

Panasonic External AI Camera Could Be A Great Stand-alone AI-Vision Solution For Smart Fridges Mass Adoption

The Panasonic NR-F53CV1-K and NR-E46CV1-K AI Camera Refrigerator models (currently only sold in Japan; stay tuned) stand out with a unique AI-powered camera solution for food management. Panasonic offers practical computer vision, affordability, and an external AI camera location for fridges. Unlike other premium brands that integrate cameras inside the refrigerator with limited AI-vision features, Panasonic’s external AI camera not only reduces costs but also opens up possibilities for a standalone AI-vision solution adaptable to various fridge models.

As a Panasonic representative at CEATEC shared, this external AI camera could potentially be marketed independently of specific refrigerator models, aiming for broader accessibility and mass adoption in a market where high-tech fridge features remain a luxury (to my knowledge, $5000 to $15000 refrigerators still offer in-fridge cameras with some AI features). 

Historically, other top consumer appliances competitors started the trend of in-fridge cameras, with models supporting features like tracking what’s inside, creating shopping lists, and tracking diets. 

To my knowledge, only one well-known brand (for the US market, as of Jan 2024) recently claimed to recognize 33 different ingredients in a consumer fridge, focusing on dietary preferences but prioritizing customization over food waste reduction.

In contrast, Panasonic’s AI technology boasts recognition of 45 different vegetables, significantly enhancing its capability to manage food freshness and promote sustainable consumption. Priced around $2259 and $2066*, respectively, the NR-F53CV1-K and NR-E46CV1-K AI vision-powered models uniquely focus on preventing food waste by suggesting fresh-produce-based recipes and complete menus.

*Based on today’s Yen/USD conversion

Eliane Fiolet
Categories: Cellphones, Events, Green, Home
Tags: AI (Artificial Intelligence), CEATEC, ceatec 2024, computer vision, food, Panasonic, refrigerator, smart fridge, Smart Home, sustainability