Sep 21, 2012With made-to-order single-cup brewing in mind, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters' coffeemaker division, Keurig, has turned to radio frequency identification. The Office Vue V1200 brewer, which has a built-in RFID reader, enables a user to make a single cup of coffee or other hot beverage, based on data encoded to RFID tags attached to single-serve beverage packets.
For several years, Keurig has been working to develop a brewer that recognizes a specific beverage packet. The Vue V1200, using what the company calls My Brew RFID technology, became available for order on Sept. 20. The new smart coffeemaker is designed for use in an office place or waiting room, where individuals would select a packet of beverage mix, such as a flavored coffee or cocoa, and brew a single cup. Thanks to RFID, the Vue V1200 brewer can recognize the type of beverage being made, and adjust its own settings accordingly.
With the My Brew RFID-based technology, single-serving Vue packs—sealed, prepackaged cups, made of recyclable polypropylene #5 plastic, containing a single serving's worth of tea leaves or ground coffee beans that the user inserts into the coffeemaker—come with a built-in "recipe" tag. The Vue pack varieties include Nantucket Blend coffee, Vanilla Latte or Dark Chocolate hot cocoa, and a variety of other flavors.
Each Vue pack has a built-in passive EPC Gen 2 ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) tag with a unique ID number (recipe code) that identifies its beverage type. When the packet is inserted into the brewer, the reader captures the ID that identifies the beverage type. The reader, designed by Keurig's engineering division, can then use its own built-in software to adjust water temperature, timing and airflow, according to that particular packet's recipe. The My Brew technology was engineered by Keurig to guide users who might not be familiar with the company's single-cup brewing system to get it right the first time, by enabling the brewer to default to optimum settings, based on the recipe tag.
"This [RFID] technology took more than two years for our engineering teams to develop," says Dave Manly, the VP and general manager of Keurig's Away From Home Marketing and Digital Direct division. "We have been working on interactive technologies for some time now, even in advance of the Vue development cycle."
In fact, the company began carrying out tests in 2010 on the use of UHF EPC Gen 2 RFID technology in its Keurig B80K home-based brewers. Testing focused on obtaining a high read rate accuracy, Manly explains, as well as the ability to apply the tag onto each portion packet accurately and efficiently on a high-speed production line in a cost-efficient way. The company ultimately chose to develop the system in its new Vue product for out-of-the-home applications. The testing of tagged packets with the brewer's built-in reader was undertaken in Keurig's laboratory and "in the field," within typical consumer environments. The brewer's reader and antennas are installed in such a way that the distance from the Vue pack allows for accurate and repeatable reads, Manly says, though he declines to specify where in the brewer the reader is installed, or to name the company providing the RFID tags that it uses. Other Vue brewers, such as the V700 model, operate with their own beverage packs that do not include the RFID tag.
If a beverage pack lacking an RFID tag were used with the Vue V1200, the device could still function. However, the user would need to select his or her preferences on the touch screen.
