JP3098111B2 - Cooking rice amount determination device - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an apparatus for determining the amount of cooked rice used in a rice cooker or a jar rice cooker.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art In order to cook rice deliciously, it is necessary to accurately determine the amount of cooked rice and control heating based on this. Therefore, conventionally, as a method of determining the amount of cooked rice, a method is known in which a rising gradient of the rice cooking temperature is calculated and the amount of cooked rice is determined based on the rising gradient. For example, in the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. 62-49048, the temperature rise gradient is calculated by measuring the time ΔT during which the pot bottom temperature rises from t1 ° C. to t2 ° C., and when the rise gradient is steep, rice cooking is performed. If the amount is small and the rising gradient is gentle, it is determined that the amount of cooked rice is large.

[0003]

However, there are cases where the temperature transition during cooking rice is not linear, that is, does not rise smoothly. In such a case, the cooked rice amount may be determined to be the same even though the cooked rice amount is different. For example, as shown in FIG. 5, the time ΔT that rises from t1 ° C., which is the timing start temperature, to t2 ° C., which is the timing end temperature, depends on the temperature setting. Sometimes it becomes. Since this is based on the average temperature rise gradient between two points given by t1 and t2, such a problem occurs. If the clocking end temperature t2 is set high, such a phenomenon is unlikely to occur, but generally, when the rice cooking temperature exceeds 60 ° C., the rice starts to be pregelatinized, so that t2 cannot be set too high. Further, even if the appropriate settings of t1 and t2 can be made, the temperature transition characteristic is slightly changed due to external factors such as the initial water temperature and the outside air temperature. An object of the present invention is to solve the above problem and improve the accuracy of determining the amount of cooked rice.

[0004]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a first rice cooking amount determining apparatus for detecting a rice cooking temperature, wherein the rice cooking temperature reaches a second predetermined temperature from a first predetermined temperature. Until the rice cooking temperature is up to
The gist of the present invention is that it comprises a temperature integrating means for integrating the rice cooking temperature and a judging means for judging the rice cooking amount based on the integrated amount of the rice cooking temperature.

[0005] Further, a second rice cooking amount determination device of the present invention comprises:
In the first aspect of the invention, the gist is that the rice cooking initial temperature is added to the rice cooking amount determination element.

[0006]

According to the first rice cooking amount determination device of the present invention having the above-described configuration, while the rice detection temperature is being detected by the temperature detecting means, the rice cooking temperature is maintained until the rice cooking temperature reaches the second set temperature from the first set temperature. in cycle temperature integrating means reaches a predetermined a sampling
And integrate. Then, the determination means determines the amount of cooked rice based on the integrated amount. Since the transition of the cooked rice temperature from the first set temperature to the second set temperature varies depending on the amount of cooked rice, the integrated amount of the cooked rice temperature during this period also depends on the amount of cooked rice. That is, if the temperature rise gradient between two points is simply grasped as in the related art, and the temperature transition in the middle is ignored, the rice cooking amount is erroneously determined. However, in the present invention, the temperature transition during that time is referred to as an integrated amount. The amount of cooked rice can be accurately determined because it is captured in the form.

[0007] Further, a second rice cooking amount determination device of the present invention comprises:
In the first aspect of the invention, the accuracy of determination is improved by adding the initial rice cooking temperature to the rice cooking amount determination element. That is, the rice cooking temperature transition characteristic varies depending on the initial rice cooking temperature, for example, as shown in FIG. 4. Therefore, the rice cooking amount can be more accurately determined by taking this rice cooking initial temperature into consideration.

The rice cooking temperature used here means not only the temperature of the actual cooked rice (rice and water) but also the temperature of the pot bottom and the like which changes with the temperature. I have. Further, a plurality of temperature detecting means may be provided, one of which takes a timing from the first set temperature to the second set temperature, and uses the rice cooking temperature by the other temperature detecting means to calculate the temperature integration during this period. May go.

[0009]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS In order to further clarify the configuration and operation of the present invention described above, a preferred embodiment of a rice cooking amount determination apparatus of the present invention will be described below. FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a gas cooker provided with a rice cooker determination device as one embodiment. The gas cooker 1 (hereinafter, simply referred to as the rice cooker 1) includes a rice cooker 10 that cooks rice by gas combustion and a controller 20 that controls the rice cooking operation.

[0010] The rice cooker 10 includes a kettle 11 for storing rice and water.
A burner 12 for burning and heating the kettle 11, a gas conduit 13 for supplying gas to the burner 12, a main solenoid valve 14 for opening and closing a gas flow path, a flow control valve 15 for adjusting a gas flow rate, and an ignition device (not shown) Be composed. In addition, hook bottom 11
A is provided with a temperature sensor 16 (hereinafter, referred to as a pot bottom sensor 16) which is in contact with the bottom center of the pot 11 and detects the rice cooking temperature. In the drawing, reference numeral 17 (shown by a broken line) denotes a temperature sensor used in a second embodiment described later, which is provided on the inner lid 18 and detects the temperature inside the shuttle.

The controller 20 performs a gas combustion control and a rice cooking amount determination process which is a feature of the present invention. The input interface 21 converts an output signal of the kettle bottom sensor 16 and the like into a digital signal which can be processed. And the main solenoid valve 1
4, an output interface 22 for outputting a drive signal to the flow control valve 15 and the like;
It comprises a PU 23, a ROM 24 storing reference rice cooking amount data and various control routines, which will be described later, a RAM 25 temporarily storing data (for example, temperature detection data, etc.), and a bus 26 connecting these to each other. Note that the reference cooked rice amount data is data obtained by an experiment in advance, and is data for determining the amount of cooked rice in which the amount of cooked rice corresponding to the integrated amount of cooked rice temperature is set for each initial rice cooking temperature condition.

Next, the rice cooking control process executed by the controller 20 will be described. FIG. 2 is a flowchart showing this process, and a rice cooker switch (not shown) of the rice cooker 1.
Start by the operation of. When this routine starts, first the rice cooker initial temperature, that is, the kettle bottom sensor 1 when starting rice cooker
6 is read (S10), and the reference rice cooking amount data corresponding to the rice cooking initial temperature is selected (S11).
Then, the gas flow path is opened and ignited to start cooking rice with a constant low heating power (S12).

Subsequently, it is determined whether or not the rice cooking temperature (sensor temperature) has reached the first set temperature t1 (S13). If it is determined that the rice cooking temperature has reached the first set temperature t1, the rice cooking temperature is reduced to the second set temperature. Until t2, the rice cooking temperature is sampled at a predetermined cycle, and the rice cooking temperature is integrated (S14, 1).
5). Then, based on the integrated amount at the time when the temperature reaches the second set temperature t2, the rice cooking amount corresponding to the integrated amount is obtained by referring to the reference rice cooking amount data selected in step 11 (S16).

Subsequently, combustion control is performed with a thermal power corresponding to the amount of cooked rice obtained in step 16 (S17), and when a predetermined cooking temperature is reached, the burner 12 is extinguished and the present routine ends. (S18, 19).

As described above, according to the rice cooker 1 of the present embodiment, the amount of cooked rice is determined based on the integrated amount of the cooked rice temperature between the first and second set temperatures t1 and t2. An error caused by the determination based solely on the temperature rise gradient between the two points is prevented. That is, even if the time ΔT during which the temperature rises from the first set temperature t1 to the second set temperature t2 is the same, as shown in FIG. , The difference in the amount of cooked rice can be accurately grasped as indicated by the difference in the hatched area in the figure.

Moreover, since the reference rice cooking amount data is provided for each rice cooking initial temperature, and the reference rice cooking amount data corresponding to the rice cooking initial temperature is selected, the rice cooking amount can be determined with higher accuracy. That is, as shown in FIG. 4, even if the amount of cooked rice is the same, the transition characteristic of the cooked rice temperature varies depending on the initial rice cooking temperature. Therefore, the selection accuracy is improved by selecting the reference cooked rice amount data according to the initial rice cooking temperature. . In the figure, (A) is a temperature transition characteristic at an initial rice cooking temperature of 5 ° C., and (B) is an initial rice cooking temperature 3.
It is a temperature transition characteristic at 0 ° C.
I agree.

Next, a second embodiment will be described. When the amount of cooked rice is determined based on the integrated rice cooking temperature, the longer the integration period, the greater the difference between the amount of cooked rice and the amount of cooked small amount of rice. For this reason, in order to accurately determine the amount of cooked rice, it is desirable to perform temperature integration until the temperature immediately before the start of rice pre-gelatinization. Therefore, in the second embodiment,
Using a temperature sensor 17 (shown by a broken line in FIG. 1 and hereinafter referred to as an inner lid sensor 17) that detects a temperature close to the actual rice temperature, the rice cooking temperature reaches the first set temperature t1 and the second set temperature By detecting the arrival at t2, the integration period is lengthened to increase the determination accuracy. In addition, in the temperature integration between the first set temperature t1 and the second set temperature t2, the rice cooking temperature by the kettle bottom sensor 16 is integrated. This is because, based on experiments conducted by the inventors of the present invention, the difference in the integrated amount of temperature can be larger in the hook bottom sensor 16. For example, if the inner lid sensor 17
In the case where the amount of cooked rice is 1 and the amount of cooked rice is 6 when the amount of cooked rice is 1 while the amount of cooked rice is 1 when the amount of cooked rice is 1. The integrated amount was 1.69.

From these facts, the inner lid sensor 17 is used to set the temperature integration period, and the shuttle bottom sensor 16 is used to determine the actual amount of temperature integration. That is,
In the processing of FIG. 2 shown in the previous embodiment, step 1
Using the signal of the inner lid sensor 17 for temperature detection at 3 and 15,
The signal of the rice cooker bottom sensor 16 is used for integrating the rice cooking temperature in step 14. As a result, the temperature integration time can be increased, and the accuracy of determining the amount of cooked rice can be further improved.

The embodiments of the present invention have been described above.
The present invention is not limited to such an example, without departing from the scope and spirit of the present invention, it is Ru course der be worked in various aspects.

[0020]

As described in detail above, according to the rice cooking amount determination apparatus of the present invention, since the rice cooking amount is determined based on the integrated amount of the rice cooking temperature, the accuracy of the determination is improved. To play. In addition, when the rice cooking initial temperature is added to the rice cooking amount determination element, this effect is further enhanced.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a schematic configuration diagram of a rice cooker as one embodiment.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart illustrating a rice cooking control routine.

FIG. 3 is a graph showing a rice cooking temperature transition.

FIG. 4 is a graph showing a rice cooking temperature transition according to a rice cooking initial temperature.

FIG. 5 is a graph showing rice cooking temperature transition.

[Explanation of symbols]

DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 ... Rice cooker, 10 ... Rice cooker, 16, 17 ... Temperature sensor, 20 ... Controller.

Claims (2)

(57) [Claims] A temperature detecting means for detecting a rice cooking temperature; and a rice cooking temperature in a predetermined cycle until the rice cooking temperature reaches a second set temperature from a first set temperature.
A rice cooking amount determining device comprising: a temperature integrating means for performing integration by pulling; and a determining means for determining a rice cooking amount based on the integrated amount of the rice cooking temperature. 2. The rice cooking amount determination device according to claim 1, wherein the rice cooking initial temperature is added to the rice cooking amount determination element.