Automated Appliances:
 Robotic Rice Cookers
Introduction
Wahiawa Middle School - Team #05-0099
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<Introduction>    <History>   <Current>   <Future>   <Bibliography>    <About Us>

          The rice cooker was invented in Japan to meet domestic needs.  Women usually cooked the rice by hand, but as women began to enter the work force, the need to decrease cooking time became desirable.  Before WWII, a majority of the Japanese women worked in family businesses such as small stores or family farms, giving them flexible hours.  By 1950, about 48% of the women were in the work force[1].  Instead of having to watch the rice cooking, time could be better spent preparing the rest of the meal or doing other chores.  In 1956, the first effective rice cooker was sold[2].  It is no surprise that the large number of women working coincided with the testing of better rice cookers.    
 
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         The success of the rice cooker as a household appliance was due to the importance of rice in Asian countries.  Rice was usually the staple diet in these countries & in Hawaii.  This made the rice cooker more of a necessity in Hawaii and many Asian countries, than a convenience as it was on the continental U.S.A.

          In 1997, 80% of the women in the work force in Japan worked in the public and private sectors.  This was a big increase compared to 1960, during which only 40% of the working women worked in public and private sectors and 60% worked in family businesses or were self employed[1].  The shift to jobs in the public and private sectors decreased the flexibility of their working hours.

In the United States, only about one in three women was in the work force in 1950.  Contrast this to nearly three out of every five women in the work force by 1998[3]. 

Because time dedicated for cooking has become more limited, increased automation in the rice making process is desirable.  If the rice could already be prepared by the time people returned from work, dinner could be started faster.  At present there are timers to start the rice cooking process but that necessitates leaving the rice soaking in water all day, leading to mushy rice.  If there was a rice cooker that could wash the rice at a set time, and then begin the cooking process, people would have perfectly fresh rice waiting for them when they returned home.  That is what our solution tries to solve.



            http://www.jei.org/Archive/JEIR98/9842f.html

 
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