MiniBay: A Smart Refrigerator System

A complete ecosystem of grocery management for the elderly. Connect the elderly with their care provider. The system includes IoT enabled refrigerator, mobile app etc.

Background

Living away from our elderly parents and grandparents, we often have these worries like: "Are they eating healthy?" "What do they need?" "What can we do for them?" These concerns lead us to think about the general elderly population and their special needs when it comes to managing their food, a very important factor towards living healthy lives.

Problem

Based on our preliminary user study with the team members' parents and grandparents, we identified the elders’ special needs.

• Due to a loss in memory, they tend to forget the date they buy in certain food, and fail to finish eating certain food in time
• They are in great need of a balanced and nutritious diet, but lack related knowledge
• They have to do grocery shopping for themselves in most cases, which is physically demanding
• They have limited ability to take advantage of technology, which make it even harder for them to solve the previous three problems by themselves

Meanwhile, their care providers are looking for better ways to meet the needs of their elderly family members. Living separately from their children, the elderly need the care from their children far more than any kind of technology solutions; however, children are often hindered by the high communication cost to provide effective care. We want to help both sides through a new design.

Proposal

A ecosystem centered around grocery management, which includes 3 main features:

• Monitor Inventory of Food in the refrigerator
  • Help the elderly manage their inventory of food without memory burden using computer vision
• Connect the elderly and their children
  • The elder’s care providers can see their grocery inventory status via mobile app
• Suggest grocery shopping list based on personalized nutrition need
  • A nutrition report generated based on personal data and food consumption

Storyboard

Architecture

UI/Interaction Design

Mobile App

Refrigerator Display (View Only)

Voice Control (Alexa)

Demo

Role in the Project

Team Lead, Backend Implementation(AI&CV), Hardware Prototyping, UI/Interaction Design