You may have seen smart refrigerators, smart air conditioners, and smart speakers that "speak", but can a range hood, steam oven, or dishwasher also "speak"?
In the past few decades, the development of kitchen appliances such as range hoods, steam ovens, and dishwashers has basically been carried out along the lines of higher efficiency, lower energy consumption, and safer, which is of course not wrong, and the needs of users are indeed here. But the inherent impression of the past has made many people ignore these most common kitchen appliances in Chinese families, so that when it comes to "smart home", everyone often thinks of refrigerators, TVs, sweeping robots and other living room appliances. But in fact, the intelligent changes that occur in the kitchen are no less than the living room.
At a time when new quality productivity has become the consensus of the times, technological innovation and scientific and technological intelligence are changing the slightly traditional kitchen appliance industry in many people's impressions.
AI will lead a new round of innovation in the kitchen appliance industry
Using digitalization and AI technology to give new vitality to kitchen appliances is not wishful thinking of the industry or enterprises, but a change in the needs of users at the bottom.
In the past two years, a popular term on social media: "white rice", which was originally just a ridicule of European and American students about the taste of local food, but gradually spread and became a popular Internet meme, used to refer to the simple method, bland, but inescapable of daily food. The group psychology behind "white rice" is that young people are moving away from complex cooking.
Especially in the increasingly fast-paced modern life, time and energy have become scarce, chain restaurants, take-outs, pre-made dishes, etc. have gradually become frequent guests at many people's tables, and making a dish full of "pot gas" has become a kind of luxury.
With the development of the times, the demand of Chinese people for cooking has gradually shown two significant characteristics: on the one hand, the demand for personalization and diversification of meals is getting higher and higher; On the other hand, we want the cooking process to be as simple and clear as possible. In the words of Zhou Haixin, senior vice president of Robam Appliances: "At present, users present very rich and diverse needs in cooking, which can basically be summarized into two categories: the first is personalization, and the second is integration. ”
Zhou Haixin, senior vice president of Robam Appliances
The two seemingly contradictory trends of simple and easy operation process and diverse cooking results reflect the increasing demand for cooking and the difficulty of traditional kitchen appliances to meet the needs of users. The deep-seated reason behind it is also in line with the judgment of Robam Appliances: "The meaning of cooking is being seriously underestimated and destroyed". Perhaps, people don't hate cooking, they just get tired of it.
How to meet the seemingly contradictory needs of users is a great test of industry wisdom. Fortunately, there have been real-life cases to explore the way for the kitchen appliance industry: in the past ten years, the reason why feature phones have been replaced by smartphones is because smartphones are simple to operate, and the use experience of feature phones can far exceed that of feature phones by just sliding the screen. However, beyond the appearance of the user experience, it is the comprehensive innovation of smart phones in the fields of operating systems, application ecology, and intelligent interaction, which finally reinvented the "mobile phone".
For the kitchen appliance industry, this is no different. Users may only notice that there is an extra display screen or a voice interaction in the kitchen appliance, but the real inside has been completely revolutionized. And now, the latest manifestation of this change is undoubtedly the AI that has taken the world by storm.
On June 24, Robam Appliances released the first AI cooking model "God of Food" in China, officially sounding the clarion call for the kitchen appliance industry to move towards the AI era.
Compared with the hardware tool attributes of traditional kitchen appliances, the AI cooking model "God of Food" is more like a cooking partner that shares the user's heart, which perceives the user's role, identity, emotion, and action by observing the temperature, time, light, sound, and smell in the cooking world, and matches the user's personalized data with the large model data to plan the most suitable cooking full-link overall solution for each user.
Specifically, like other AI models, "God of Food" is an assistant that integrates advanced AI technology; The difference is that the "God of Food" has taken cooking to the extreme. Through deep learning of a large number of recipes and cooking techniques, it can analyze users' ingredient inventory, dietary preferences and nutritional needs, and provide customized cooking solutions. Users only need to enter the relevant information, and the "God of Food" can recommend suitable recipes and guide each step of the operation in detail, including ingredient preparation, cooking time and temperature control, etc., greatly improving the convenience and success rate of cooking.
Moreover, the "God of Food" is not a "ruthless tool", it not only provides functional assistance, but also contains multiple dimensions such as philosophy, aesthetics, cultural history, and human sophistication, which can actively perceive the user's emotions and actions, and communicate with the user's mind like a cooking partner.
Whether it is functional or emotional, the emergence of "God of Food" can be called the first in the industry. However, it is not easy to do this, whether it is for the industry or for Robam Appliances itself, entering the AI model requires not only forward-looking insight, but also its continuous cultivation on the cooking track.
An innovation engine that uses AI to create new quality productivity
In the past year or so, AI models have swept the world, and both enterprises and individual users can clearly perceive the changes it has brought about, and few people doubt its value today. But there are also many people who have another doubt: why did the first AI cooking model in China come from Robam Appliances?
In the tech industry, there has been no shortage of people asking why Apple reinvented the smartphone for more than a decade. They are all essentially a question, and the answer requires looking at history.
Just like Apple has created the McIntosh personal computer and MP3 player iPod before the creation of the iPhone, Robam also has a deep accumulation of innovation.
Founded in 1979, Robam Appliances is one of the oldest kitchen appliance companies in China, and has insisted on deep cultivation of cooking for many years, so that Robam Appliances has long been the head of domestic kitchen appliance enterprises. According to Euromonitor International data, Robam range hoods and cookers have led the global sales for 9 consecutive years. According to the data of Aowei Cloud Network, in 2023, the online retail sales market share of Robam Appliances range hoods, gas stoves, and kitchen appliance packages will rank first in the industry; The market share of offline retail sales of range hoods, gas stoves, built-in composite machines, and built-in steaming and baking machines also ranks first in the industry. The leading market share has also made Robam Appliances a fish in water in the high-end market and has become the preferred high-end kitchen appliance brand for domestic users.
From gas stoves to dishwashers, from range hoods to steam ovens, Robam Appliances has almost achieved the forefront of the industry in every kitchen appliance subcategory. The leading market position has brought not only the high brand reputation of ROBAM, but also the cooking data and knowledge graph accumulated in the past 45 years, as well as a large amount of general data. And they are the necessary data foundation for large AI models.
But if you want to build a tall building, it is not enough to have high-quality building materials, you can only build a taller skyscraper. As a "pathfinder" of scientific and technological innovation in the industry, as early as 2010, at the beginning of the wave of smart phones, Robam Appliances began to explore the digital transformation of the kitchen appliance industry, and in more than ten years, it has successfully built the industry's first future factory, released the industry's first set of digital kitchen appliances and AI cooking assistants, and basically completed the transformation and upgrading of the whole link and digitalization of enterprise operation.
Thanks to the rich innovation in the field of intelligence over the years and the massive cooking data accumulated over the years, Robam Appliances has keenly captured the potential value of AI large models to the industry. While other peers are still exploring conventional digital transformation and striving to achieve "wide and comprehensive" business, Robam Appliances has chosen a "dedicated and deep" path of exploration, "digging 10,000 meters deeper" to fully deploy the cooking AI model.
As a result, Robam Appliances has become one of the few companies in the industry that has both the motivation and strength to promote the implementation of AI large models.
Innovation is not stopped, and the humanistic background does not change
In the "2023 Customer Experience Insights of China's Home Appliance Industry" released by Vion Experience Consulting, such a new trend is proposed: in the new experience era, it is difficult to meet the needs of users simply by selling products, so enterprises have shifted their business focus to the operation of users, focusing on establishing deeper and longer-term relationships.
However, for the kitchen appliance industry, it is particularly difficult to establish a deeper connection with users, how can users have an additional connection with a gas stove and multi-function oven? And that's exactly what AI models are good at.
In the past year or so, ChatGPT and other AI chat software have exploded around the world, and in addition to being highly intelligent, the "aggressiveness" it shows has also made many people worry about the impact that AI may have on human work. The complexity of AI is also forcing companies to take it seriously. In this regard, Robam Appliances gave its own understanding: strengthen the advantages of AI large models in intelligence, interactivity and emotion, and insist on using AI to assist humans. In the view of Robam Appliances, to meet the pursuit of a better life for human beings, we need not only the power of science and technology, but also the temperature of humanity, which can point out the direction for science and technology.
With the support of AI models, kitchen appliance brands can actively establish a deeper and long-term interactive relationship with users.
The essence of innovation is not to show off skills, but to return to the user. From deep cultivation of the industry to insight into user needs, Robam Appliances rediscovered the underestimated cooking value, and finally created a product route with the perfect integration of technology + humanity in the AI era by virtue of the technological dividends under the development of new quality productivity.
Tong Jingjing, Chief Digital & Marketing Officer of ROBAM, unveiled a new brand value proposition
At the press conference on June 24, ROBAM put forward a new brand proposition of "enjoying creation", which is not difficult to understand for users to enjoy creation, but it also has another layer of deeper meaning: because of the love for cooking, ROBAM enjoys the process of striving for excellence and creating tools for users. From cooking to life, ROBAM hopes that everyone can enjoy creation in all walks of life, enjoy creation in the interest of love, and enjoy creation in ordinary life.
From the industry's first AI cooking model to a new brand proposition, technological innovation never stops, but what remains unchanged is the humanistic care of Robam Appliances.
In the final analysis, the essence of an enterprise is to better create value for users and society. In the past 45 years, ROBAM has achieved a comprehensive breakthrough in business, innovation and branding, and users have regained the meaning and fun of cooking in the process, and enterprises and users have achieved a high degree of "harmonious resonance".
Promoting the transformation of industry thinking through technological innovation is not only a new operating paradigm provided by Robam Appliances for the industry in the new era, but also a new change brought by the "Kitchen God" AI model to users and the industry.
Thanks to the accumulation in the field of innovation in the past, Robam Appliances may continue to lead the innovation and development of the kitchen appliance industry, create a successful sample for the industry inside and outside, and jointly promote the improvement of new quality productivity in society.