The secret is integration. By Ed Wenck, CEDIA

Sure, you’ve likely seen refrigerators with touch panels embedded into the doors. There are even IoT-connected “precision cookers” on the market, and now there’s a gadget called the “GeniCan,” which keeps a running list of what you’ve thrown away so you’ll know what you need to replace the next time you go to your local supermarket.

There are two problems with this endless array of gadgets coming to a big-box store near you. The first is a bandwidth issue that drives smart-home integrators crazy: Most folks don’t know that their residential Wi-Fi systems can only handle so many wireless devices, and The Spinning Beach Ball of Doom becomes a regular occurrence. This isn’t terribly maddening when the “smart garbage can” stops working for a bit, but in the final minutes of that intense thriller you’re streaming? Oof.

The next issue is one of “interoperability” — are these devices supposed to talk to one another? Or communicate with an Amazon or Google device? Can they? Will they?

Residential technology pros who can look at a home’s kitchen holistically — with the same kind of over-arching vision a designer or architect might bring to a project — can ensure that an array of devices both satisfies an end-user’s desires andeliminates frustrations. (For more information or to find technology integrators, visit www.cedia.org.)

So What’s an Integrated Kitchen Going to Look Like?

The CEDIA Tech Council, a group of forward-thinking volunteers, tracks trends and developments, and alerts members of the association to new advances that might make an impact. Last year, the group knitted together 100 predictions for the residential tech we’ll see in 2020, and some of those guesses are becoming ever more accurate.

Imagine:

An intelligent kitchen ensuring you never burn another burger. Robotic arms stirring your sauce. Your countertops themselves — not just that fridge —becoming touch screens. Sensors shutting off burners the moment internal meat temps hit the desired doneness.

But perhaps the most startling development is the imminent arrival of projection mapping appearing on surfaces throughout the home. Julie Jacobson, Tech Council member (and editor with the industry publication CE Pro), remembers seeing a demo at CES in which small, hardly-visible projectors displayed images across kitchen surfaces. In addition to providing ingredient lists and recipe instructions projected onto cabinets, images were flashed “onto a countertop, which could become hot pads on command. The hot spots would become inductive heat sources. You could interact with the video with a gesture.”

Maybe Rosie the Robot won’t be serving up spaghetti by the dawn of the next decade, but a lot of the cookware that George and Jane relied on in “The Jetsons” is looking more plausible by the minute.