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From the heater to the fridge: Chips to revolutionize the household

MUNICH (dpa) – Long before computers ever did, electronic chips and microprocessors marched slowly, almost imperceptibly, into households everywhere. Televisions, heaters, washing machines: there’s hardly a device made nowadays which doesn’t have them.

   “Wherever functions need to be carried out or where multiple inputs need to be coordinated logically, chips are there,” says Hartmut Runge, member of the Research and Development team at electronics giant Siemens. Control is what chips are all about.

   Take heating, for example. Since the late 1980s, heating technology manufacturer have built microprocessors into their systems, says Joerg Sonnenschein, a consultant in the field of control technology.

These firm-specific processors are “not as highly developed as they are in a PC,” says Sonnenschein, but rather focus on the specific challenges that confront a controller during spatial heating and the warming of water.

   Since microprocessors can be equipped with a variety of standard programs, heating systems can be fitted more precisely to the customer’s needs. This is how Sonnenschein explains the industry’s decision to use the technology. The various functions could also be done the conventional way – with mechanical components, coils and resistors – “but then we would have ended up building an enormous box,” the specialist notes.

   Television has also been fundamentally affected by chips, beginning at the production level. The use of chips has sharply reduced the number of internal components, says Bernd Weickert, Director of Multimedia Development at television maker Loewer. Thanks to chips and microprocessors, the inside of a television now looks almost empty, Weickert says.

   Microprocessors have also endowed televisions with new functions, Weickert explains. Chips have made extinct the mechanical dial as a channel changer, have allowed for control menus and video text data, and – for many the most important point – cleared the path for infra- red signals, which allows the TV to be more effectively controlled from across the room.

   Other household devices such as the washing machine have also gained new programmability thanks to chips. “Up to four highly intelligent and up to four further intelligent microcontrollers” are responsible for steering the average washing machine from Miele, according to the company. Furthermore, materials like wool, which once were too delicate to be washed except by hand, can now be handled through washing cycles controlled by chips.

   Miele places a high value on electronics that keep the lowest profile possible, says the company’s Theodor Sieper. That’s why Miele, like many other washing machine manufacturers has replaced all of its mechanical controls with microprocessor-based ones, and not just for the increased programmability that chips enable.

   “Mechanical parts break sooner than electronic ones,” Sieper says, and his opinion is confirmed by Siemen’s Runge. “In the past a washing machine was a marvel of fine mechanics,” he says. Yet a camshaft setup demanded a variety of mechanical contacts that would need repair. “The electronics are more reliable.”

   “Above all, chips are used for their reliability,” says Hans Heinz Zimmer, Departmental Director at the VDE Testing Institute in Germany, an organisation that evaluates the safety of electronic appliances. “The failure rate has gone down,” he notes in relation to the safety testing.

Yet these figures are not to be confused with potential for long life, Zimmer warns. The chips may have given the devices more functionality, but “with every function that is added in, the potential for errors works its way in as well.”

   Refrigerators and small appliances like toasters and hand mixers largely have remained bastions of chipless design in the home. Yet this too will change, probably within the next five years, says Runge. Prototypes already exist for a speaking freezer and a toaster that can be worked by remote control, all enabled through chips.

   On the horizon looms a house which can be controlled perfectly through electronics; the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Wiring and Systems (IMS) is currently turning this vision into reality in a model home built in conjunction with industry partners such as Viessmann and Miele.

   “The home itself will become intelligent,” says Franz Miller, spokesman for the Fraunhofer Society. “We are standing at the cusp of a second phase of electrification of the household.”

If the first phase focused on using machines to replace work traditionally done through muscle power, the coming phase will be focused on comfort. This might mean that a chip in the milk carton informs a chip in the refrigerator to warn the consumer that the milk has expired. Or the central heating could automatically turn itself off once a chip establishes that all residents have left the house.

   Yet for anyone who has tried in vain to program a supposedly simple video recorder, such visions may seem suspect. For these people, Juegen Wolf of the Fraunhofen Institute offers some consolation: all of these technical advances are aiming at “socially able devices” that can adapt themselves flexibly to each person’s individual preferences.

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