
Dishcraft Robotics Takes over Dishwashing from Humans - headalgorithm
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/dishcraft-robotics-takes-over-dishwashing-from-humans
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cududa
This is a bit silly. First the fact that one of their “breakthroughs” was
discovering it’s easier to rack the same dish types before washing them shows
not a single on of them have ever worked a dish line.

Second, custom dishware with proprietary magnets baked in is ... unlikely to
catch on

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sohkamyung
> custom dishware with proprietary magnets baked in is ... unlikely to catch
> on

It says this in the article: _It turns out that many places don’t actually
care what dishware they use, so if Dishcraft can provide them with new
dishware that’s much easier to clean, then great._

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cududa
Yeah I’m 1000% not buying that places don’t care about dishware.

The ones that truly don’t care buy it in bulk for cheap as hell. The ones that
do care, selectively chose their dishware. Saying “well actually everyone will
be happy to use our dishes” is a bit funny.

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ericd
Yeah, it’s hilariously wrong. Some serious gymnastics to make that limitation
seem like a nonissue.

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Cthulhu_
Wow someone over-engineered a solved problem down to a very specific one track
use case.

Call me a luddite but there is nothing wrong with current day industrial
dishwashers. Rack up your plates / glasses / cutlery, slide it in, close the
cover, it yeets some high pressure water and detergent on it, done in five
minutes if that. Few moving parts, super flexible, proven technology, and
costs a fraction of what this will.

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stupidcar
If they're so good and so cheap, then why do so many places still employ human
dishwashers?

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SiempreViernes
I don't think many places with someone hired just for the dishes makes them do
it purely by hand, typically the machine does the washing and the human does
the loading, and stacking and return of cleaned dishes.

The dishwasher on display only really simplifies the loading bit.

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jnwatson
They didn't talk at all about drinking glasses, utencils, or pots and pans.

It takes up a _lot_ of room. And you still need a regular washing station.

It would have to be a very large restaurant to support such a machine, really
one that already has more than 1 human dishwasher at a time. Perhaps this
would make sense for a large cafeteria or hotel that does catered events.

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thrwew22312
I seriously doubt the economics will work - it reminds me of that laundry
ironing startup that went out of business in Japan.

The hardware shown will cost the business atleast a $100-200k - why would you
do something like this ? It's inflexible, you can't upsize/downsize with
demand, and selling this off is going to be a pain. This could work as a
marketing gimmick in the cafeteria of some SV unicorns.

Consumer robotics is hard - no one has really succeeded in this space - and
for good reason. The control/interaction challenges are immense and likely
won't be solved very soon (despite hype coming from the RL crowd).

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imtringued
The robot itself is ok, it basically holds a dish and rotates a sponge/brush.
I can see how it can compete with a regular dishwasher. But the business model
really takes the cake. Dishes as a service? If you're going to ship off the
dishes to be processed at a central site anyway then do you really care if a
robot is washing your dishes? It wouldn't surprise me if the robot only exists
for PR and they secretly use dish washers.

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MegaButts
I get that robots are hard and I suspect they were initially trying for
something much more ambitious...but how is this better than a regular
commercial dishwasher? It actually seems worse in many significant ways. It
focuses entirely on plates, it doesn't seem to have steam sanitation, it's
huge, almost certainly much more expensive and much more timely and difficult
to maintain and repair.

What restaurant wants this?

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orpheline
Level of scrubbing to clean a dish is dependent on what the for was and how
long it remained on that dish after the meal.

Restaurants don't need a robot dishwasher to individually scrub and examine
each plate; they need a robot busser to collect the dishes as soon as a meal
is done and put them directly into the dishwasher, so food doesn't have time
to dry and bond with the dish.

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King-Aaron
So a human still needs to manually load the dishes, and stack them away
afterwards.

I have a Bosch dishwasher that does exactly the same thing.

~~~
joezydeco
It washes only one type of dish?

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reustle
This machine seems far overcomplicated. Also, the dish at 00:50 in the video
had a visible dirt spot after cleaning.

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SubiculumCode
Problem: Don't like putting dishes away into your cabinets?

Solution: Two dishwashers. One full of clean dishes. One empty for dirty
dishes. Use the clean dishes, put away used in the other dishwasher. Once full
of dirty dishes, the clean will be empty of dishes. Wash. Now the two washers
change roles.

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thrower123
Is is this a real thing that real people actually do? I hear this idea
presented here and on Twitter on a regular basis as a solution, but I have
never once in my life seen a house that has double dishwashers. At a purely
practical level, the whole idea has some issues; most codes require a
diswasher to be on a dedicated circuit, and then you'd need to duplicate the
plumbing.

It seems like the kind of over-the-top extravagance that you could only
support in a thousand square foot HGTV kitchen.

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imtringued
I don't get your problem. You just buy a single dishwasher with two
compartments. It's that simple.

[https://www.remodelista.com/posts/appliances-dishwasher-
draw...](https://www.remodelista.com/posts/appliances-dishwasher-drawers/)

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wumms
> And if your dishwater [sic] doesn’t show up for work, everyone else in the
> kitchen has to pitch in to make sure that there are enough clean dishes,
> slowing everything down.

This is either not a typo or a really extraordinary dishwasher not showing up.

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joshvm
Not a typo. Dishwasher in this case means a human. Most places still need
people to wash things. They might have a mechanical dishwasher, but people are
needed for fragile stuff, pots and pans, big boards etc.

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stevekemp
The typo in question was "dish-water", not "dish-washer".

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xiphias2
One of the ideas could be used in my home dishwasher as well: using camera &
deep learning to set the water pressure for the dishes. Sometimes I just need
to put back some dishes for another round in my home dishwasher.

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anotheryou
can only handle one shape and must me ridiculously expensive. pls compare to
this one:
[https://youtu.be/f1dO8UGAq7A?t=61](https://youtu.be/f1dO8UGAq7A?t=61) not the
one in my home

