FEATURE
KITCHENS OF TOMORROW
As mechanical engineers and industrial designers contemplate how humans will prepare food in the future, they must weigh complex, and often contradictory, design requirements.
Written by Kayt Sukel
IN A 1956 COMMERCIAL FILM FOR FRIGIDAIRE, a woman garbed in a long, white gown and striped apron danced her way through the kitchen of the future, availing herself of its engineered “push-button magic” to handle some baking while she ran off to the country club.
“Whether you bake or broil or stew, the Frigidaire kitchen does it all for you! You don’t have to be chained to the stove all day, just set the timer and you’re on your way!”
Thanks to advertisements like these—and the work of General Electric’s renowned industrial designer Arthur BecVar, who spurred innovative new kitchen designs in the late 1950s—most of us have been waiting for a space age cooking set-up for decades. Something akin to Star Trek’s food replicator or even the toaster knife described in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yet, despite exciting advances in engineering, most of us still rely on an old oven-cooktop combo that looks fairly similar to the ones seen in our parents’ kitchens.
The latest GE Profile™ Smart Refrigerator features a built-in barcode scanner that can read any barcode (referencing a catalog of 4 million products). By scanning any grocery or household item, the fridge automatically adds it—complete with brand, flavor, and size—to a digital, shareable, shoppable grocery list. Photo: GE/CES 2026
“The oven remains a common piece in people’s homes,” said Kevin Glennon, senior director of hardware at Tovala, a company specializing in smart ovens packaged with a meal delivery service. “You may build it out with a range and microwave on top, but it’s still, generally, what people use to cook every day.”
Of course, these ovens and cooktops are not exactly the same as the ones mom and grandma used. Even today’s most traditional cooking appliances boast multiple cooking modes, self-cleaning options, digital interfaces, and improved insulation. Yet, despite those features, many are moving away from these conventional appliances because they take up too much space and can often be both time and energy hogs. That’s why many younger consumers are moving toward smaller, countertop cooking appliances: air fryers, multi-cookers, indoor grills, and toaster ovens. They often allow us to cook our favorite foods faster—and sometimes even better—than the old boxy standard.
Equipped with six cooking modes, the Tovala Smart Oven Pro can air fry, bake, broil, reheat, steam, or toast on command. The device is wi-fi enabled and can scan QR codes for recipes, grocery lists, and even meal deliveries. Photo: Tovala
Yet, despite all evidence to the contrary provided by my two teenage children, humans cannot survive on air fried meals alone. And engineers are creating new cooking systems, including robotic sous chefs, invisible induction cooking countertops, 3-D printing and laser cooking systems, and even all-in-one blending-food processing-mixing-and-cooking appliances, which are challenging the way we think about preparing and heating our meals.
It’s enough to make a whole new slew of kitchen of tomorrow reels—just maybe without all the fancy clothes.
Space, efficiency, and customization
Nathan Sniadecki, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Washington who used to co-teach a ‘Kitchen Engineering’ course, said that the kitchen was his first lab and is a great place to explore engineering concepts.
“It’s fascinating to think about the way that kitchens have evolved over the past 100 years. It used to be a place to just make the food and today it’s a place where you do food prep, food storage, cooking, and more. More than that, the kitchen is a gathering place—and the place where all the gravity in the house tends to go,” he said.
Certainly, advances in “smart” appliances now means that a consumer can use a mobile device and a Wi-Fi connection to pre-heat the oven before they come home—or provide some guidance on what options are in the fridge and available to cook. Yet, Sniadecki said, when it comes to cooking, there are many areas ripe for improvement, especially in terms of energy efficiency.
“I don’t know how your kitchen runs, but if I turn on my toaster oven, hot water heater, and coffee maker at the same time, I blow a fuse. It takes a lot of wattage to run an oven,” he said.
Engineering students disassemble KitchenAid mixers as part of mechanical engineering professor Nathan Sniadecki’s class on “Kitchen Engineering” at the University of Washington. Photo: Nathan Sniadecki
With ongoing concerns about health risks from gas cooktops, many appliance makers are leaning into electric options, including more energy efficient induction options, which use electromagnetic fields to heat cookware directly. Some are battery-powered or only require a standard 120-volt outlet.
Yet, even as these ovens and cooktops lessen their energy requirements, there’s still the problem of inefficient heat transfer across the many different appliances in the kitchen, Sniadecki said. We pump all the heat out of foods to keep them fresh. Then we heat them up again to consume them. There should be a way, Sniadecki said, to integrate ovens with refrigerators, and even other kitchen appliances, to require less energy.
“There are ways we could borrow from one appliance to help lift up the other,” he said. “If they can share resources or interconnect, we can make cooking appliances much more efficient.”
Glennon agreed, since most people don’t live in “new home construction,” there’s no guarantee they have access to 40 amps to power an induction appliance, no matter how well it roasts a turkey.
“It’s not that easy to change the infrastructure of a home to add more power,” he said. “If you go hire an electrician to do that, your $300 oven just became a $5,000 project. So, we need to find better ways to help these appliances heat up.”
The Hisense Smart Induction Range comes equipped with an AI assistant to help with cooking. Photo: Hisense/CES 2026
Then there’s the matter of space. Today, you can find induction cooking countertops that are built right into the counter. Some even hide the induction coils inside the counter material itself, rendering them invisible—so you can use the counter space for other purposes when they are switched off. A newer prototype demonstrated at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show heats up when you place a specialized pot or pan on the coil—and can also power other small appliances, like a blender or food processor, said Morris Misel, a business futurist and innovation specialist.
“It’s a great space saver,” he said. “Because they only activate with specific cookware, you can decide what you use your counterspace for.”
Beyond energy efficiency and space, there’s another design constraint that engineers thinking about the kitchens of tomorrow must contend with: convenience. Tovala is addressing it through the company’s meal subscription program, Glennon said. A consumer need only scan a QR code on the prepackaged meal, and the Tovala oven will know how to cook the food to perfection. But Jonathan Blutinger, who worked on a 3-D printing and laser cooking system while a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University, and now works at a design consultancy, added that people also, increasingly, want cooking appliances that allow more customization.
“The 3-D printer is a technology that’s been around for decades. We can put it in a consumer-friendly product, with a small form factor, that will allow users to do a lot more in terms of nutrition control,” he said. “I now see a lot of interesting products coming through the pipeline that are about optimizing each meal for the person on a much more personal level, where you have different interfaces that allow you to track nutritional value and macros and still cook good food to eat.”
Designing for the future
Mark Oleynik, chief executive of Moley Robotics, which creates automated, luxury kitchens using a robotic arm, believes that technology can bring signature chef dishes to the home. The company has developed three residential and two commercial models, which follow the exact instructions of professional chefs to create perfect meals.
“We followed chefs and looked at the specific timing, the exact sequence of operations during cooking, and ingredient specifications—all exactly the way that chef created the dish,” Oleynik said. “Our robot can then mimic the chef’s motions, operating different appliances like a blender or induction cooktop, to make a meal just like you would get in a restaurant.”
LG’s new home-making robot CLOiD, which can fold laundry and serve food. Photo: LG/CES 2026
Misel believes we might all have robotic sous chefs within 20 years. They can do all the food prep that so many of us abhor, saving us time and frustration.
“In my view, we’ll see there’s a robot room in the kitchen of the future, kind of like a butler’s pantry. It will be a washable, safe place where the robots can prepare and cook the food and people will not get in the way—and then there will be a human part of the kitchen where people will come together and eat it,” he said.
Before our robot overloads take over the kitchen, however, Sniadecki believes there are plenty of opportunities for engineers to improve cooking in the here and now. Integration with other appliances to create greater efficiencies is one way—but he also sees great promise in novel surface coatings.
“Kitchens of the past had a lot of wood surfaces, and, of course, all the grime got stuck in the cracks. We’ve moved to ceramics and metals, which are nice, but they could be improved upon, too, for better heat transfer and durability,” he said. “There are now bio-inspired technologies that can make surfaces better for all kitchen appliances—and, based on their nanostructure, they could also make cleaning much easier. Who wouldn’t want to sign up for that?”
But the real challenge for engineers moving forward, said Dan Formosa, a design consultant and co-founder of Smart Design, USA, will be finding a way to create the kitchen of the future that will meet often contradictory design requirements.
“There’s a division here—you want convenience when cooking. You want AI to make your dinner. You want your toaster oven to have brains enough to tell you what you need to do to make the perfect sandwich. And the technology is emerging so those kinds of things are probably in the cards,” he said. “But, on the other end of the spectrum, people also want the kitchen to be this comfortable, creative space where they can do things they want to do.”
“Food is a very emotional topic for people. You see this in how people cook. You see it anytime you go to a restaurant, and everyone has that one little tweak to their order. That’s another reason why I think customization is going to be so important in designing these cooking appliances.”
—Jonathan Blutinger, senior design engineer at Smart Design
I understand this division Formosa speaks of all too well. One evening, I want a kitchen with a robot sous chef to chop veggies and meat and then throw all the fixings into a stew pot without me having to lift a finger. But another night, you will find me vigilantly watching an Italian nonna on YouTube, elbow-deep in flour, eggs, and potatoes, so I can make authentic gnocchi from scratch. I never know, one day to another, what kind of mood I might be in—or how I might want to interact with my cooking appliances.
That’s why, Blutinger said, he thinks the progression to kitchen autonomy will be a “slow burn.”
“Food is a very emotional topic for people. You see this in how people cook. You see it anytime you go to a restaurant, and everyone has that one little tweak to their order,” he said. “That’s another reason why I think customization is going to be so important in designing these cooking appliances.”
Formosa said that engineers can help bridge that gap by not thinking about designing an oven or a cooktop, per se, but designing things that will help people cook. But even that is not without its challenges. Glennon said the whole concept of Tovala stems from helping people get the best food they can get with the least amount of work.
Photo: Getty Images
Yet, despite having an oven with several modes including bake, air fry, and broil, its most used cook cycle, by far, is toast.
“When we talked to users, they said they use toast because it’s easy for them to just throw food in and go,” he said. “So, we’ve spent a lot of time optimizing and perfecting our toast—because that’s what people want.”
So, perhaps, I will not be donning a ball gown and apron to enjoy a futuristic kitchen’s “push-button magic” any time soon. I’ll have to make do with my air fryer (if the kids will ever let me at it) and my old standbys, the crockpot, oven, and range.
But, even with all the design challenges, including the emotions surrounding cooking, Blutinger believes, one day, we will have a universal cooking “box.”
“I think we’ll see an appliance that is an integration of different cooking modalities—and it would be integrated with your fridge so it knows what you have and can give you some recommendations on what to cook so it could take a lot of the guesswork out of figuring out what you want to make for dinner,” he said.
It might not be the food replicator that Star Trek promised—but if it allows me the freedom and ease to manage dinner for my family every night, I’m all for it.
Kayt Sukel is a technology writer and author in Kansas City.
© 2026 The American Society of Mechanical Engineers. All rights reserved.