Cooking appliance with camera and method for operating a cooking appliance

Description

[0001] The invention relates to a cooking appliance comprising a cooking chamber with a loading opening, a cooking chamber door for closing the loading opening which has a viewing window, and a camera directed into the cooking chamber. The invention also relates to a method for operating such a cooking appliance. The invention is particularly advantageously applicable to ovens and / or microwave ovens, which may be designed as household appliances.

[0002] EP 0 899 512 A1 discloses a cooking appliance with a heated cooking chamber for cooking food and with an optical device for detecting the food and displaying it on a screen, wherein the optical device and in particular the screen are integral parts of the cooking appliance.

[0003] WO 2012 / 146523 A1 discloses an oven door intended to be attached to a household or industrial oven and used to close an opening in a muffle of the oven, wherein the oven door is equipped with an outer and an inner wall and at least one image recording device, wherein the at least one image recording device is arranged and adapted inside the door between the outer and inner walls to capture images of the interior of the muffle, and wherein at least a part of the outside of the outer wall has a heat sink which is thermally coupled to the image recording device.

[0004] DE 10 2011 002 187 A1 discloses a household appliance with a treatment chamber and a door closing the treatment chamber. A camera is assigned to the treatment chamber, which is suitable and designed to transmit images recorded from the treatment chamber to a display device.

[0005] US 2017 / 000292 A1 discloses an oven with a monitoring unit that monitors a cooking chamber and transmits data obtained through monitoring to an external device via a network, enabling a user to check a cooking process of the oven through the external device without directly checking the oven.

[0006] WO 2016 / 034295 A1 relates to a household appliance, in particular a cooking oven, with a camera. The household appliance comprises a cooking chamber and a door for opening and closing the cooking chamber. The door includes a window or a transparent section. The door includes a door handle located on the outside of the door. The camera is located inside the door handle, with the camera's lens extending from the camera through the window or transparent section of the door into the interior of the cooking chamber. Image signals generated by the camera are displayed or displayable by an image display device, wherein the image display device is part of the control unit of the household appliance and / or part of a connected or connectable external device.

[0007] WO 2009 / 138359 A1 discloses a household appliance with an image capture device, in particular with an internal image capture device, a method for capturing an internal state or operating state of such a household appliance, and a method for reducing thermally induced energy losses in a household appliance that can be opened and closed, in particular a refrigerating appliance or a heating appliance, with a cavity in which a thermodynamic system can be accommodated.

[0008] US 4,711,979 discloses a viewing device that facilitates the internal inspection of a microwave oven during the production of a food product or the like in a microwave treatment process. The viewing device includes a tubular support that can be extended through an opening formed in a side wall of a microwave oven and that extends into close proximity to a food product undergoing microwave treatment in the oven.The viewing device includes an element consisting of telescopic tubular sections; essentially, the length of which can be varied by adding or removing sections depending on the size of the food product contained in the microwave oven, and which includes a grid structure for supporting an optical viewing device in and coaxially related to the tubular element; with the optical viewing device, such as an endoscope, fibroscope, borescope or the like, being guided from the microwave oven to the outside in operative communication with a suitable photographic or video recording device.

[0009] DE 102 36 211 A1 discloses a cooking appliance with mirrored walls.

[0010] The camera in the oven is generally used to transmit a still or moving image of the food being cooked to a user device such as a smartphone or tablet. With some ovens, a disadvantage is that the privacy of people standing in front of the oven could be violated, as the camera – depending on its positioning – might offer a view of them.

[0011] It is the Task The present invention aims to overcome at least some of the disadvantages of the prior art and, in particular, to provide a way of viewing the cooking chamber of a cooking appliance with improved protection of privacy or personal rights.

[0012] This problem is solved according to the features of the independent claims. Advantageous embodiments are the subject of the dependent claims, the description, and the drawings.

[0013] The task is solved by a cooking appliance, comprising a cooking chamber with at least one reflective cooking chamber wall and with a loading opening, a cooking chamber door for closing the loading opening which has a viewing window, and a camera directed into the cooking chamber which is coupled to an image processing device and whose field of view lies at least an area of ​​the reflective cooking chamber wall, where The image processing device is configured to anonymize at least one image area in an image captured by the camera, which comprises at least one fixed image area, wherein the fixed image area corresponds to an area of ​​the reflective oven wall.

[0014] This cooking appliance offers the advantage of providing users with an image of the cooking chamber in which any people depicted are no longer recognizable. This protects the privacy of individuals standing in front of the appliance. An anonymized image can also be sent over the internet or another data network without the risk of tracking individuals, for example, to a mobile device belonging to the user of the cooking appliance or to other individuals. Furthermore, such a cooking appliance is particularly easy and inexpensive to implement.

[0015] Because the cooking chamber has at least one reflective wall and the image processing device is configured to anonymize at least one image area corresponding to that reflective wall, the advantage is achieved that only the portion of the image corresponding to the reflective wall needs to be processed for anonymization purposes. This significantly reduces the data processing effort required for anonymization. This design takes advantage of the fact that non-reflective areas of the cooking chamber typically cannot reflect a person with sufficient sharpness to make them individually identifiable. Since at least one image area to be anonymized or anonymizable comprises at least one predefined area, the anonymization process is particularly simple and quick to implement.Because the predefined image area corresponds to a portion of a reflective oven wall within the camera's field of view, it can be reliably ensured that no person is individually identifiable in the anonymized image. In other words, the image area that corresponds to a projection of the reflective oven wall is anonymized. This image area is known in advance based on the camera's characteristics (e.g., its field of view) and its position relative to the oven, possibly depending on the shelf level used.

[0016] The cooking appliance can be an oven, a microwave oven, a steamer, or any combination thereof. The cooking appliance is, in particular, a household appliance.

[0017] The cooking chamber serves to hold food for processing by the cooking appliance, in particular for heat, microwave, and / or steam cooking. The food can be placed into or removed from the cooking chamber through the loading opening.

[0018] The viewing window allows people standing in front of the cooking appliance to see the food inside. Light emitted from people in front of the appliance can also enter the cooking chamber and be captured there. The camera pointing into the cooking chamber can record an image of the cooking chamber, including any food inside. Therefore, images of people in the cooking chamber may be present in the (raw) images captured by the camera.

[0019] Anonymization can involve filling the image area with pixels of a constant color (e.g., in the form of "blackening" or similar) or with a pattern (e.g., in the form of "pixelation"). The anonymized or to-be-anonymized area of ​​the image may depict a specific person or may only be capable of depicting a person, even if no person is present in front of the cooking appliance.

[0020] It is a configuration in which the cooking appliance has at least one data transmission device for transferring images captured by the camera – anonymized or non-anonymized – to an external device. The data transmission device can be designed as a communication module. The at least one data transmission device can be wireless (e.g., in the form of a Bluetooth and / or WLAN module, etc.) and / or wired (e.g., in the form of an Ethernet module, etc.). The external device can be a user terminal, in particular a mobile user terminal such as a smartphone, tablet PC, etc.

[0021] The image processing unit is designed to process or edit the images captured by the camera. The camera is specifically a digital camera.

[0022] The fact that the image processing device is configured to anonymize at least one area of ​​an image captured by the camera includes, in particular, modifying or processing the area to be anonymized in such a way that persons depicted therein are no longer individually identifiable. This may mean that persons are still recognizable as types of persons or as persons in general, but no longer as individual persons. It may also mean that persons are no longer even recognizable as persons in general.

[0023] It is a further development to note that the image processing unit is a functional component of the cooking appliance. It can exist as a standalone hardware component or as an image processing function that can run on a unit with other functions, such as the control unit of the cooking appliance. The control unit then also serves as the image processing unit. It is also a further development to note that the image processing unit is a device or function that can be connected to or linked to the cooking appliance via data transmission and is therefore an external device or function. This offers the advantage of making the cooking appliance particularly simple and cost-effective to design. The image processing unit can, for example, be functionally provided by a network server (e.g., of the cooking appliance manufacturer) and / or as a cloud-based function.

[0024] According to the invention, at least one anonymizable image area can be determined by means of the image processing device. This achieves the advantage that a particularly small sub-area of ​​the image captured by the camera needs to be anonymized.

[0025] This configuration involves the image processing unit being set up to evaluate multiple images captured by the camera for moving image areas, with at least one anonymizable image area corresponding to a moving image area. This achieves the advantage of eliminating the need for complex object recognition to selectively anonymize moving or previously moving objects, such as people. This approach exploits the fact that people in front of a cooking appliance typically do not stand still enough to make their movement undetectable. A moving image area thus indicates a person and can be anonymized. In a further training exercise, two images captured by a camera can be compared to identify a (sufficiently fast) moving or previously moving area.In particular, image areas – especially in the last image taken – can then be anonymized if they are not identical or not very similar to those in any of the other images.

[0026] This configuration involves the image processing device being set up to perform object recognition on persons, and at least one anonymizable image area corresponding to an image area belonging to a recognized person. This allows for particularly precise person recognition and / or a particularly small image area to be anonymized.

[0027] This configuration involves the image processing unit being set up to anonymize at least one area of ​​a camera-captured image only if a person's presence in front of the cooking appliance is detected. This reduces data processing overhead and improves the information content of the camera-captured image if no person's presence is detected. Detecting a person in front of the cooking appliance can be achieved, for example, optically (e.g., by a camera pointed into a space in front of the appliance) or based on other physical principles.

[0028] This design incorporates at least one person detection device configured to recognize the presence of a person in front of the cooking appliance. This provides the advantage that the cooking appliance can independently detect the presence of a person. The person detection device, or at least one sensor thereof, can be located on the front of the cooking appliance, for example, integrated into a front panel, the cooking chamber door, a door handle, etc.

[0029] One configuration of the person detection device includes an infrared (IR) sensor and / or an ultrasonic (US) sensor. These types of sensors enable a particularly cost-effective and reliable detection of the presence of people in front of the cooking appliance.

[0030] It is a further development that the image processing unit is configured to anonymize at least one area of ​​an image captured by the camera only when a corresponding anonymization function is activated. This allows for user-controlled activation and deactivation of the anonymization function, thus increasing user satisfaction. For example, some users may place little or no value on anonymization but appreciate the most realistic possible image of the cooking chamber.

[0031] The task can also be accomplished by a system comprising a cooking device as described above and at least one user device, in particular a mobile user device such as a smartphone, tablet PC, etc., wherein the cooking device and the user device are data-linkable or linked. The system can be designed analogously to the cooking device and offers the same advantages. In particular, the area-anonymized images can be displayed on the user device.

[0032] The problem is also solved by a method for operating a cooking appliance as described in claim 11.

[0033] The procedure can be designed analogously to the cooking appliance or system and offers the same advantages.

[0034] The properties, features and advantages of this invention described above, as well as the manner in which they are achieved, will become clearer and more easily understood in connection with the following schematic description of an exemplary embodiment, which will be explained in more detail in conjunction with the drawings. Fig. 1 shows a sectional side view sketch of a cooking appliance in the form of an oven with a camera directed into a cooking chamber of the oven; Fig. 2 shows a possible sequence for carrying out a method for operating the oven. Fig. 1 Fig. 3 shows a non-anonymized image taken with the oven's camera. Fig. 1 has been recorded; and Fig. 4 shows the image from Fig. 3 after anonymization.

[0035] Fig. 1Figure 1 shows a cross-sectional sketch of a cooking appliance in the form of an oven 1. The oven 1 has a cooking chamber 2, which has a loading opening 4 at the front that can be closed by means of a cooking chamber door 3. The cooking chamber door 3 has a viewing window 5. At least one rear wall 6 of the cooking chamber 2 is reflective. A food rack 7 is located on a corresponding shelf in the cooking chamber 2, on which the food G (here in the form of a chicken) rests.

[0036] The oven 1 further comprises at least one camera 8 directed into the cooking chamber 2. The camera 8 can capture (raw) images Br of the cooking chamber 2. The camera 8 is designed and positioned such that the images Br captured by it typically show the food being cooked G and at least part of the rear wall 6 of the cooking chamber 2. The camera 8 can be located inside the oven 1 (as shown) or outside the oven 1.

[0037] Camera 8 is coupled to an image processing unit, which here is designed as a control unit 9 of the oven 1 with image processing function. The control unit 9 is thus configured to process the images Br (see) captured by camera 8. Fig. 3 ) to process further. Due to its image processing function, the control unit 9 is also configured to identify at least one image area BB in an image Br captured by the camera 8 (see Fig. 3 ) to anonymize and thereby create an anonymized image Ba (see Fig. 4 ) to provide or generate.

[0038] The control unit 9 is further connected to a person detection device in the form of an IR sensor 10, which is integrated into a control panel 11 of the oven 1. The control unit 9 is designed to detect the presence of (heat-emitting) persons P on or in front of the oven 1 by means of the IR sensor 10.

[0039] The control unit 9 is also connected to a wireless communication module 12, such as a WLAN module or a Bluetooth module of the oven 1. The control unit 9 is configured to transmit images Br, Ba, captured by the camera 8 and, if necessary, anonymized, via the communication module 12 and, if necessary, a data network N to a user device, here: in the form of a smartphone S.

[0040] Fig. 2 shows a possible procedure for carrying out a process for operating oven 1.

[0041] In step S1, a user activates a cooking process that includes taking pictures Br from the cooking chamber 2 using camera 8.

[0042] In step S2, at least one image Br is taken using camera 8.

[0043] In step S3, it is checked whether the presence or absence of at least one person P in front of the oven 1 has been detected using the IR sensor 10.

[0044] If not ("N"), the image captured by camera 8 is not anonymized and is transferred as such to the user device S in step S4.

[0045] If so ("J"), in step S5 a fixed image area BB of the image Br is filled by blacking out and thus anonymized using the control device 9, whereby the image area BB corresponds to the area of ​​the rear wall 6 of the cooking chamber 2 shown in the image Br.

[0046] The image Ba, anonymized in step S5, is then transferred to the user device S, where it can be displayed on an image display device in the form of a screen.

[0047] The above steps S2 to S5 can also be repeated several times as part of a cooking process, e.g. at regular time intervals.

[0048] In a training course, anonymization is only carried out if a user has made or confirmed a corresponding setting for oven 1.

[0049] Fig. 3Figure Br shows a non-anonymized image taken with camera 8 of oven 1. Camera 8 is located in the ceiling area of ​​cooking chamber 2 or in a side wall of cooking chamber 2 near the ceiling. Due to the fixed position of camera 8 relative to cooking chamber 2, the image area BB, which depicts the reflective rear wall 6 of cooking chamber 2 in image Br, is predetermined (as indicated by the dashed outline). If a person P is in front of oven 1, they can be depicted on the rear wall 6 of cooking chamber 2, as symbolically indicated by the image A(P) of person P.

[0050] Fig. 4 shows an anonymized image Ba, which was created by anonymizing (here: blacking out) the image area BB of the image Br. Fig. 3 was created. In the process, the image of the food G was also partially blacked out, which lies within the image area BB.

[0051] Of course, the present invention is not limited to the embodiment shown.

[0052] In general, "ein", "eine", etc. can be understood to mean singular or plural, especially in the sense of "at least one" or "one or more", etc., unless this is explicitly excluded, e.g. by the expression "exactly one", etc. Reference symbol list

[0053] 1 Oven 2 Cooking chamber 3 Cooking chamber door 4 Loading opening 5 Viewing window 6 Rear wall of the cooking chamber 7 Food rack 8 Camera 9 Control unit with image processing function 10 IR sensor 11 Control panel 12 Communication module A Image of a person Ba Anonymized image BB Image area Br Non-anonymized image N Data network GG Food P Person S Smartphone S1-S5 Process steps

Claims

1. Cooking appliance (1), having - a cooking compartment (2) with a loading opening (4) and at least one reflecting cooking compartment wall (6), - a cooking compartment door (3) for closing off the loading opening (4), which has a viewing window (5), characterised by - a camera (8), which is directed into the cooking compartment (2) and is coupled to an image processing facility (9), and in the field of view of which at least one region of the reflective cooking compartment wall (6) lies, wherein - the image processing facility (9) is configured to anonymise at least one image region (BB) in an image (Br) recorded by the camera (8), which image region comprises at least one permanently predefined image region, wherein the permanently predefined image region corresponds to a region of the at least one reflective cooking compartment wall (6).

2. Cooking appliance (1) according to one of the preceding claims, wherein at least one image region (BB) that can be anonymised can be determined by means of an image evaluation.

3. Cooking appliance (1) according to claim 2, wherein the image processing facility (9) is configured to evaluate a plurality of images (Br) recorded by means of the camera (8) for image regions that have moved and at least one image region that can be anonymised corresponds to an image region that has moved.

4. Cooking appliance (1) according to claim 2, wherein the image processing facility (9) is configured to carry out an object recognition with regard to persons (P) and at least one image region that can be anonymised corresponds to an image region associated with a person (P) recognised by means of the object recognition.

5. Cooking appliance (1) according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the image processing facility (9) is configured to only anonymise at least one image region (BB) in an image (Br) recorded by the camera (8) if a presence of a person (P) has been recognised in front of the cooking appliance (1).

6. Cooking appliance (1) according to claim 5, wherein the cooking appliance (1) has at least one person recognition facility (10) that is configured to identify a presence of a person (P) in front of the cooking appliance (1).

7. Cooking appliance (1) according to claim 6, wherein the person recognition facility (10) comprises an IR sensor and / or an ultrasound sensor.

8. Cooking appliance (1) according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the cooking appliance (1) has a data transfer facility (12) for transferring images (Br, Ba) recorded by means of the camera (8) to an external instance (S).

9. Cooking appliance (1) according to one of the preceding claims, wherein the image processing facility (9) is a component of the cooking appliance (1).

10. System, having a cooking appliance (1) according to one of the preceding claims including claim 8 and at least one external instance in the form of a user terminal (S), wherein the cooking appliance (1) and the user terminal (S) can be coupled to one another from a data perspective.

11. Method (S1-S5) for operating a cooking appliance (1) according to one of claims 1 to 8, in which - a camera (8) records (S2) at least one image (Br) of the cooking compartment (2), - at least one image region (BB) associated with the at least one permanently predefined region of the reflective cooking compartment wall (6) is anonymised (S5) in at least one image (Br) and - the anonymised image (Ba) is provided (S4) to at least one image display facility (S), in particular a user terminal (S).