A statistical pattern recognition approach for the classification of cooking stages. The boiling water case

Although pattern recognition technique has been widely used in many fields, it seems that very few studies have applied this technique to cooking processes. In this preliminary research, a new methodology has been developed and tested on a simple case of water boiling. Besides defining and analysing the efficacy and the performance of a statistical pattern recognition approach when applied to different signals (sound and vibration), an optimisation module has been proposed to boost the classification rates by adding syntactical analysis that enables the inertia of the process to be considered. In the specific case of boiling water, almost 100% successful recognition has been reached. These results prove the validity of this methodology, opening up new research lines for new scenarios, such as different cooking processes, acoustically polluted environments, and sensor optimisation.