System

Our Product

SousChef is the first fully automatic vegetable cutter designed with the needs of people with physical disabilities in mind. Cutting vegetables is a time-consuming and often dull process for most. But, despite its lacklustre appeal, cutting is a fine motor skill that for some can be difficult if not impossible. Various disability groups such as people with Parkinson's disease, people with physical impairments or even the blind may have a hard time performing this crucial kitchen task. Our product aims to make cooking accessible to all, through simplifying the cutting process to just placing a vegetable on the cutting board of SousChef. Through the use of a sleek and simple UI or easy to learn voice commands our users can specify exactly how they want their vegetable cut. Sous Chef gets to work and within minutes it presents the user with a finely cut vegetable, ready for cooking.

Fuctionality

SousChef’s ease of use is thanks to the seamless and innovative integration of different technologies. SousChef can be operated through a simple UI. To operate the cutter you just follow a very intuitive and straightforward process to specify the cuts you want, on the inbuilt touchscreen. For those who are unable to operate a touchscreen due to a motor disease, blindness or any other disability, SousChef can also be operated through voice commands. SousChef wakes to the simple phrase “Hey Chef”. All you have to do after that is specify the number of slices or pieces. The system also provides audio feedback upon recognising a command so that the user can rest assured that they have interacted with SousChef successfully.

As with any kitchen appliance, safety is an integral concern in the design process. For this reason, SousChef’s inner workings all live inside a surrounding case. The case easily opens from the front to allow for ease of access of the cutting board. To operate, open the case’s front door, place the vegetable on the board, shut the door and operation should begin immediately. If the door remains open, SousChef will remain idle until it is shut. This way, the entire cutting process remains inaccessible to the user, ensuring safety in the kitchen. In addition, the integrated computer vision automatically detects whether the placed item is indeed a vegetable. In the case that it is not, the cut will simply not be performed to avoid any damage to the blade and potential dangerous malfunctioning of the cutter. During the cutting process, the user can also vocally tell SousChef to 'stop' resulting in the process ending.

Our modular design makes SousChef very easy to clean. The cutting board is both easy to access and fully removable, making it ideal for cleaning. The protective casing of SousChef is also removable allowing the user to access the inner workings of the product for internal cleaning. Of course, removing the casing means that SousChef cannot operate so that our users feel safe when accessing it. The blade used to cut the vegetables can also be easily removed for cleaning or replacing.

Market Research

The kitchen appliances market is large and growing. In the US alone, kitchen gadgets and tools grew from a 1.06 billion in 2012 to a 1.2 billion dollar market size in 2017, and the market is predicted to only keep growing [1]. However, despite the size of the market the amount of appliances designed with the needs of people with disabilities in mind are very limited. When it comes to cutting the range of products is small and limited to non-slip cutting board and vegetable stabilisers none of which eliminate the cutting process. And while food processors are a common appliance their use is far too limited to replace the cutting process as it allows for little to no customizability with respect to the size and shape of the cuts. Contrast this with the fact that 1 in 37 people today will be diagnosed with Parkinson’s in their lifetime [2], 2 million people in the UK live with sight loss [3] and almost 10% of all disabled people in work in 2019 had disabilities related to their arms or hands [4], it becomes quickly apparent that a product like this has a suitable market. In fact, the market for equipment for people with disabilities in the UK has grown by 12% between 2009 and 2013 [5] and continues growing to this day. SousChef aims to provide the customizability the human hand can provide without the risk of handling knives. It is no surprise that knife related injuries cause more disabling injuries than any other hand tool with 36% of those injuries attributed to kitchen knives [6]. It is fairly obvious then that SousChef not only fills a gap in the market but also provides a safe and accessible way for people with disabilities to feel like true masters of their kitchen.

• [1] Retail sales of kitchen gadgets and tools in the United States from 2010 to 2017 (in billion U.S. dollars)
• [2] Media and press office - Parkinson's UK
• [3] Blindness and vision loss - NHS
• [4] Disability and employment, UK - Office for National Statistics
• [5] Key facts - Disabled Living Foundation
• [6] Knife-Related Injuries Treated in United States Emergency Departments, 1990–2008

Potential for Future Development

SousChef is a product with a large and promising future for development. One big area of development will be the customization of our cuts. Currently, the cutter allows for sequential vertical cuts but the infrastructure allows for a much greater degree of customization. With improvements in our software, motor power and a wire under tension instead of a blade we can create cuts in all directions allowing for custom shapes to be cut into the vegetable. This will obviously allow for prettier cuts but also a potential shift into marketing our product as "3D printer for food". This would mean that the market for our product would significantly grow to include amateur chefs looking for professional looking results. In addition, it would allow our current target demographic to have an even greater range of cutting potential with the same ease of use that our current product offers.

In the more immediate future, our goal as a team is to continue improving the usability of our product. We envisage the next stages of development to include more sophisticated voice control, a lighter more compact build and stronger motors to allow for more impressive cuts. This last detail is of particular importance as the limitations of our building materials meant a limitation in the vegetables we could cut. With stronger motors both the cuts and the holding mechanism can be stronger to allow for a varying size of vegetables and potentially even fruits and cheeses to be cut. One thing is for sure, the future of our product is bright and promising.