PORTLAND, Ore. — Smart refrigerators are not entirely new but General Electric's (GE's) ChillHub is the first to open-up its smarts with built-in USB ports for third-party smart accessories that let you use an app at the grocery store to tell you how much milk, soda, beer, eggs or even separate vegetables are left in the ChillHub. Plus, in collaboration with 3-D printer maker MakerBot Industries, LLC (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and rapid-manufacturer FirstBuild (a collaboration of GE and Local Motors in Louisville, Kentucky), the companies ran a contest to see which ideas from users could be made into serviceable, manufacturable accessories. The winners were announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2015, Jan. 6-9, Las Vegas).
According to Jenny Lawton, CEO of MakerBot (a subsidiary of Stratasys Ltd. in Eden Prairie, Minn.) the ChillHub is the first major home appliance that offers consumers the ability to imagine and prototype their own smart refrigerator accessories. Using the MakerBot Replicator 3D Printer enables consumers, engineers and traditional product designers to rapidly prototype their ideas. And Natarajan (Venkat) Venkatakrishnan, director of FirstBuild, promises to rapidly manufacturer successful designs in its "microfactory" for worldwide marketing in a fraction of the time it ordinarily takes.
Source:
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1325539
