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A refrigerator of the future that tells you what to cook with your leftovers and automatically re-orders fresh food is being designed in the UK.
The self-cleaning "refrigerator of the future" will automatically place supermarket home delivery orders when required and move food near its use by date to the front of the shelves.
Researchers hope the fridge could clean itself, cut down on wasted food and offer up recipes - which could be tailored to different countries, cuisines and seasons.
With Brits putting in 36 million hours every year of free overtime - leaving little time for household chores - the refrigerator could help save precious time during hectic modern-day lives.
These new developments are in the pipeline thanks to collaborations between scientists at the University of Central Lancashire and online supermarket Ocado.
The planned new features include the ability for refrigerators to scan their shelves to see what is in stock and use this information to both plan meals and automatically place a supermarket food order.
The smart fridge will use "nano-articulated technology" shelf surfaces which, whilst smooth to the touch, will have millions of independently controlled micro-tiles which will manoeuvre products which soon need to be eaten to the front of the refrigerator.
Ultrasound-scanning technology built into the door will allow the refrigerator to "swipe and capture" the food on a plate before and after mealtime, meaning it can assess what type and amount of food is wasted.
Dr Simon Somerville, an expert from the University of Central Lancashire, said: "Cookbooks are essentially inventory lists of food items. To this end the most available information that the refrigerator will have is a set of permutations that allow a set number of ingredients to produce a large number of quite different dishes. The key concept in the successful implementation of this process is accurate inventory tracking."
参考译文：
英国正在研制一种未来冰箱，它可以告诉你如何用剩菜做出美味佳肴，而且还可以根据新鲜程度自动调整食物的摆放顺序。
这种自洁式“未来冰箱”会自动下订单让超市送货上门，还会把接近保质期的食物放在搁架的最前面。
研究人员希望这种冰箱可以自动清洁、减少食物浪费并提供食谱—能够满足不同国家、不同烹饪方法、不同季节的需求。
由于英国人每年都得为加班牺牲3600万个小时的闲暇时间，几乎没有时间做家务，这种冰箱可以帮助人们在繁忙的现代生活中节省宝贵的时间。
英国中兰开夏大学的科学家与网上"奥卡多"超市目前正在联合开发未来冰箱。
按照计划，未来冰箱的新特点包括能够扫描搁架上的食物、清点库存，利用这些信息安排晚餐，并自动创建一份超市食物订单。
这种智能冰箱的搁架表面将采用“纳米合成技术”，由数百万独立控制的微型瓷砖组成，手感细腻平滑，可把必须尽快食用的食物挪到冰箱搁架最前面。
冰箱门所采用的超声波扫描技术可使冰箱在餐前和餐后“捕捉”盘子里的食物，这就意味着它可以对被浪费的食物的种类和数量做出评估。
中兰开夏大学专家西蒙.萨默维尔博士指出：“菜谱从本质上说是一份食品的存库清单。这样说来，未来冰箱的信息系统可对所有食材进行排列组合，用有限的原料做出许多不同的菜肴。成功执行这一程序的关键在于精确的库存跟踪。”
