The voice-activated Lynx Smart Grill prototype talks back
The Lynx Smart Grill is an interactive grill concept that responds to voice commands and lets you track cooking status from your Android or iOS device.
Lynx sells expensive built-in and free-standing grills. Although these professional-grade grills are all full of fancy features, none of them offer connected features. But Lynx made an announcement at CES 2014 that's about to change all that. It's a new product called the Lynx Smart Grill. Basically, it does everything except put your food on the grill for you.
This thing comes equipped with what Lynx calls My Chef technology. That's a voice-recognition feature that allows you to chat with your grill. Before you start grilling, it will ask you a series of questions about your recipe (type of meat, how well you like it cooked, etc.). Then, it links to a database that decides how long to cook the food and what method to follow. It even instructs you on where to place the food on the grill to ensure the most consistent results.
Once you've added your food to the grill, you're pretty much done. This concept works in conjunction with an app so you can track the progress of your meal and receive alerts when it's done. And, if the grill doesn't "hear" initial instructions from you within 30 minutes, it automatically powers down.
It sounds like this prototype was designed for people who love grilled food, but don't want to spend any more time hovering over a grill than they absolutely have to. That might take a bit of the "fun" out of grilling, but the tech is definitely intriguing (a first, as far as we know). Unfortunately, you will have to wait a while to purchase one. Lynx Smart Grills aren't expected to be available until 2015 and, of course, they will cost even more than Lynx's current line-up.