Most of us have had a morning routine that looks quite like this: You wake up in the morning, walk into the kitchen, still half-asleep to turn on the coffee machine and make the breakfast. That’s when you notice that you’re out of milk and that the dinner you were planning for later has half its ingredients missing. Your toast ends up burning, the smoke filling up the kitchen till you switch on the vent and by then your day is off to a bad start and you have to grab a fast food breakfast.

Now, imagine this other scenario. You walk into the kitchen still half-asleep only to find your coffee ready, the milk and dinner ingredients delivered to your home. The news is already being read out on the speakers. The toast does burn but the intelligent sensor on your kitchen vent immediately switches on and sucks the smoke away. You end up having a peaceful breakfast and a good start to your day.

The latter scenario may seem science fiction-like, but it is the near future if not the present already. Technology is fast making an in-road into our plain old kitchens transforming them from simply a place where you cook to a more functional space. Integrated technology or the Internet of Things will soon make supermarket runs a dream of the past. We’re already seeing signs of smart kitchens, voice assistant devices help amateur home cooks perfect recipes by reading them out instead of the tedious page turning of yesteryears and motion-sensor enabled faucets that prevent water wastage. In the future one will be able to check the contents of one’s refrigerator, order the required groceries and have them delivered, all from the comfort of one’s work desk.

Of course, there is more to a smart kitchen than simply the groceries, IoT-enabled devices like coffee machines, ovens, dishwashers and more can be programmed remotely to work as per your requirements. So instead of waiting for the oven to preheat before you put in your ready-to-bake item, you can simply turn it on from the car while driving back home, so that it is ready as soon as you walk through the door. Smart kitchens will also be able to inform you about any gas leaks as soon as they happen so that you can take appropriate measures before you enter your home.

As we can see, technology integrated kitchens are rapidly making their way into our kitch-en. It won’t be long till the future of kitchens becomes the present.