I. NEED

My wife is an ecclectic collector of recipes. I always joke with her that she has the
largest collection of Internet- supplied recipes in the world. And, despite that, she never
fails to ask me: “So, what should I make for supper tonight ?”.

A symptom of food preparation today, our laziness compels us to rely on quick food.
But, our taste buds and bodies yearn for a fresh, home-cooked meal. It easily explains all
these new services providing home delivered meal ingredients along with “easy-to-use”
preparation instructions. It also explains the newest kitchen appliances that are (almost)
all-in-one meal makers.

The truth is that most good home-cooked meals need the right utensils, appliances, and
preparation know-how. Why not somehow incorporate that know-how into appliances
and utensils operating in harmony and with minimal intervention from us ordinary
mortals ?

II. CONCEPT

The proposed solution is the Autonomous Meal Plan Platform for Appliances
(AMPPA™). Figure 1 of [1] illustrates the concept of AMPPA™. A Calendar is used to
generate a Weekly Menu Plan, which points to executable Recipes. Each Recipe is a list
of messages. Each message is also list consisting of an appliance or utensil operation
(e.g., slice, grind, mix, chop), an ingredient, and any associated parameters. Parameters
may be prompts to a human to perform an action assisting an appliance or utensil.
Recipe Makers dispense Recipe messages to appropriate appliances, utensils, and us
mere mortals. A Meal is realized when Recipe Makers are triggered to complete all
related Recipes.

This and the subseqent sections are the high-level view with more details available.

III. OPERATION

Figure 2 of [1] illustrates how AMPPA™ realizes this concept. At the heart of AMPPA™
is a small (hand palm sized) computing device: The Kitchen MicroServer (KMS). The
KMS runs the Calendar, Weekly Meal Planner, and instances of multi-tasked Recipe
Makers. The AMPPA™ app is used to provide diet constraints and final plan approval to
the Weekly Meal Planner.

IV. IMPLEMENTATION

Figure 3 of [1] illustrates how AMPPA™ is deployed. The underlying assumpotion that a
home or institution using AMPPA™ compatible appliances has a WiFi network deployed:
the “backbone” of AMPPA™.

The KMS is a Raspberry Pi Zero unit running under its native Raspbian operating system.
Any AMPPA™-compliant appliance or utensil device incorporates both a WiFi
communications component and a compatible AMPPA™ Client embedded software
component which interpets and acts on AMPPA™ Appliance Messages relevant to that
appliance or utensil. The Recipe Maker in the KMS manages the exchange of AMPPA™
Messages enabling the completion of a recipe.

The AMPPA™ app in a iOS or Android device conveys diet constraints to the Weekly
Menu Planner in the KMS. It also is used to review the weekly menu plan and interact
with us mere mortals to assist appliances and utensils in the completion of recipes as
instructed by the Recipe Maker.

V. REFERENCES

[1] – AMPPA concept illustrations (AMPPA.pdf)