There are so many great recipe apps, but taking a tablet to the kitchen can be both inconvenient and potentially disastrous. Siobhán Andrews, a Falmouth University student, thought up an elegant solution. He submitted the sketch of an interactive chopping board with a giant touchscreen display to Sharp Labs' #GetItDownOnPaper competition. Over the course of two months, the idea became a prototype called Chop-Syc, which aims to simplify healthy eating by providing easy cooking instructions and calculating portion control.
The chopping board runs unique software designed to specifically help with the cooking process. After a user selects a recipe, the ingredient amounts automatically adjust to match the number of people dining. There's also a spaghetti measuring tool, which displays a circle on the screen that users can compare to uncooked pasta in order to make the correct portion. Using a built-in scale, users can even measure individual ingredients directly on the chopping board's surface.
Chop-Syc is also Wi-Fi enabled, which allows users to browse and save recipes directly from their kitchens. The built-in recipe manager stores a user's cooking history, so it's easy to look up a favorite past meal. But the goals for the device are much loftier than just a fancy recipe manager: the team hopes to help tackle the problem of global obesity by empowering users with easier access to healthy recipes and portion control.
This idea for a digital chopping board isn't completely new, but this is the first time we've seen a working prototype. Although the product is still in the concept stage, the company is exploring its options in terms of bringing an actual product to market. It would likely be a big improvement over other kitchen-based tablets we've seen.