US 4,734,553 AGranted

Cooking apparatus capable of detecting temperature of food to be cooked

AssigneeKabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

InventorTomimitsu Noda

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Abstract

A cooking apparatus determining a temperature of food to be cooked by detecting the changes in the intensity of the infrared rays from the food. The cooking apparatus includes an infrared ray detecting circuit having a detecting element which detects infrared rays from the food. When the actual temperature change in the vicinity of the detecting element is more than a predetermined value, the detecting element is prevented from receiving the infrared rays from the food. The detecting element detects the actual temperature, and the infrared ray detecting circuit outputs the corresponding detection value. The detection value from the infrared ray detecting circuit is stored in a control circuit. The output of the infrared ray detecting circuit is corrected by the stored detection value when the detecting element is exposed to the infrared rays from the food in order to carry out a precise temperature detection for the food.

Claims13

Dependent claims

A cooking apparatus, for controlling a cooking operation in response to the temperature of food to be cooked, comprising:

means for detecting infrared rays from the food, including
a generating means for generating a first heat signal having first and second components when the infrared detecting means receives infrared rays from the food, said first component corresponding to the temperature of the food and said second component corresponding to the actual temperature in the vicinity of the infrared detecting means, and for generating a second heat signal having only the second component when the infrared detecting means receives no infrared rays from the food;
temperature detecting means for detecting the actual temperature change in the vicinity of the infrared detecting means;
shutter means for blocking the passage of infrared rays from the food to the infrared detecting means when the actual temperature change detected by the temperature detecting means exceeds a predetermined value;
control means responsive to the shutter means and the infrared detecting means, for storing a value representative of the second component in the second heat signal from the infrared detecting means when the infrared detecting means receives no infrared rays from the food, and for substracting the stored second component value from the first heat signal of the infrared detecting means when the infrared detecting means receives infrared rays from the food for generating a temperature signal including the first component and corresponding to the temperature of the food.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.