
Eric Schmidt: People want dish-washing robots more than any other kind - zeep
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/google-billionaire-eric-schmidt-people-want-dish-washing-robots.html
======
randomdrake
Fun article and a good reminder that the desires of human beings may not have
changed as much as we think.

The dishwasher, as we know it, was not invented by someone who was tired of
doing dishes.

It was invented 130 years ago by a wealthy woman who didn't like the way her
servants handled her good China. She tried washing the dishes herself but
found it too much to bear. She wasn't even the one who was washing the dishes,
she just knew that her servants weren't good enough at the task described:
"Assess where things are, you have to identify everything, you have to
remember where it goes, you have to move it in an appropriate way and you have
to do all this in some manner of real time."

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grahamburger
Personally I'd much rather have a robot to do the laundry (including sorting,
folding, ironing, etc) Dishes aren't really that big of a deal for me even
with a family of 5.

~~~
robotresearcher
That's probably because you already have a robot that does 90% of your dish
washing. A dishwasher.

But none of the loading and unloading yet, unfortunately.

Folding clothes is super hard:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo)

~~~
tempestn
We already have a robot that does 90% of the laundry too. Washing laundry by
hand is a lot harder than washing dishes.

I agree though that folding clothes is a hard job to automate, as simple as it
seems. And that I would love to have a robot that could do it!

[https://i.pinimg.com/474x/73/36/c6/7336c66c64b0410793a708521...](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/73/36/c6/7336c66c64b0410793a708521d23d72a
--its-funny-hilarious.jpg)

~~~
xbmcuser
Just get a $5-10 folding board makes folding a lot easier and faster.

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hawski
I don't understand.

> (...) people want robots to be able to do more than to wash the dishes (...)

> (...) they would like a robot to do, (...), is clean up the dishes in the
> kitchen (...)

> (...) robot dishwasher (...)

So I understand that it is supposed to be more than a dishwasher, but what
then?

I was lately thinking about replacing my wide dishwasher with two narrow ones.
It would be a double buffering dishwasher. Then I would store most of my
dishes in one and when they are dirty I would just place them in the other.
When all (or almost all) dishes are in the other dishwasher I would run the
washing.

I was also thinking about garbage drawers all around so cleaning would be
easier. Something like from the ending of Johnny English [0].

It would be certainly cheaper then a robotic dishwasher. I would also buy used
ones, as I am already using one.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V5-MQcTtCc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V5-MQcTtCc)

EDIT: also that's entirely different thing, but something to consider - fish
cleaners: [https://www.youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com)
/watch?v=THcKJpXwqVM ;)

~~~
majewsky
> So I understand that it is supposed to be more than a dishwasher, but what
> then?

I suppose what they mean is a robot which can scrub (like a human) all those
cooking utensils which are not dishwasher-compatible.

~~~
photojosh
We don't buy anything dishwasher-incompatible any more.

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vanderZwan
Dish-washers are just about the only household appliance that currently are
more ecological than the human labour they replace.

Which makes me wonder: aside from liberating people from menial tasks (which
is great! It leads to more equality[0]), could robots also be more
_sustainable_ than human labor?

[0]
[https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...](https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing_machine)

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
Except these new efficient ones work very poorly. It's not terribly ecological
to replace a large appliance every other year.

~~~
hocuspocus
> Except these new efficient ones work very poorly.

I haven't noticed that at all. Nowadays in Europe most dishwashers and washing
machines offer energy-saving cycles that do the same job, only 3 times slower.
As far as I'm concerned this works as advertised.

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amelius
The easiest solution is to buy two dishwashers, one for clean stuff, one for
dirty stuff, and then alternate between them.

~~~
mattnewport
I've always wanted this setup, if I ever design my own kitchen it will have
this.

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fiftyacorn
You don't need that - you buy two dishwashers. then move the dirty dishes into
the dirtier dishwasher and once full run a cycle, then repeat the process

~~~
tempestn
This is so you don't have to put dishes away? You treat the dishwasher of
clean dishes as your cupboard? If so, I like the way you think!

~~~
Waterluvian
I lived in a student house one year and we did this. It was amazing. Because
of how it worked, you'd hear absurd things like, "does anyone need a salad
bowl? I want to do another load and it's not empty!"

We became highly in tune with our dish needs and patterns.

~~~
tempestn
Yeah, I used to live like this too. Now with kids we generally have an entire
load of dirty dishes ready to go in by the time the last one is done cleaning.
:P (Hence, this two-dishwashers idea sounding pretty good!)

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forkLding
Sort of similar to Henry Ford's anecdote: "f I had asked people what they
wanted, they would have said faster horses".

One part is that people really still don't what they can't have tried before,
which is mass introduction of robotics in the household that are artificially
intelligent.

------
continuations
I'd much rather have a robot to do laundry, put on bed sheet, clean bathroom,
buy groceries, go pick up takeout food.

Dish washing is way down the list.

~~~
seanp2k2
The first few are done by a housekeeper. They’re not that expensive; if you’re
living in the Bay Area it’s probably only a small fraction of your rent for a
significant increase in free-time to hire one. Groceries and food => prime
fresh or farmstead (there are many) and doordash / uber eats / task rabbit /
grubhub / eat24 etc.

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ragebol
These are exactly the sort of tasks we're aiming for in RoboCup@Home [0, 1].

With recent advances, this is getting closer and closer.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73enwaP0tJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73enwaP0tJk)
[1] [http://robocup.org/domains/3](http://robocup.org/domains/3)

------
jpster
Hmm, I’d much rather have a robot to feed my dogs, control their access to the
backyard and scoop their poop.

~~~
timthelion
Why do you have a dog? I ended up in the situation that I have two cats, but
my wife's allergic. They are now restricted to one largish room and the
garden. It's a bit of a a pain in the arse for me to take care of them this
way, but if I were to automate this, that wouldn't help much. Every morning I
awake to them crying for attention, and I have to go in and coddle them. Turn
them upside down, rub their bellies. They even enjoy it when I clean their
toilet, rubbing up against my legs and purring as I do it. Automating the task
of taking care of them would save me exactly zero time, and only enable me to
be a worse cat owner.

~~~
jpster
> Why do you have a dog?

I ask myself this question every day :) I rescued them from the shelter and
love them dearly, but they are a handful!

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Delmania
Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat itself to your door.
Automated cars? Automated factories? Automate the routine, the daily tasks of
life, and people will throw money at you.

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O1111OOO
> "That turns out to be an extraordinarily difficult problem," says Schmidt.

So odd to hear this when everyone seems to be building self-driving cars...

At any rate, if there was one household chore I would happily hand over to a
robot, it would be sweeping and mopping. I'm honestly surprised that this
didn't make it into the article.

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patchorang
I would much rather have a robot cook for me, even if I had to wash it’s
dishes.

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myroon5
All I want is combined washer+dryer for laundry to become more popular. Would
make laundry as simple as throwing it in anytime and forgetting about it

~~~
dogma1138
Combination washer/dryers tend to be smaller it’s also a pain in the arse to
separate not only by color and programme but also by what can then go into the
dryer and what can’t and at what temperature you can set the dryer too to
avoid damaging the fabric and shrinkage.

Laundry is by far the most annoying thing luckily plenty of places around me
offer 5 shirts for £5-7, so outside of T-shirt’s and underwear I don’t wash
most of my daily clothes anything else is dry clean only.

Sports clothes I’ve started simply drying quickly and freezing them overnight
in a bag my running clothes like it much better. I don’t need to buy new under
armor leggings shirt and running jackets every 2 months now that I don’t run
them through the washer and dryer cycle more than once every 8-10 days.

~~~
myroon5
I just throw everything in together in one load. Haven't ever had any issues
yet

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dnautics
I don't mind dishwashing. I mind having to remember to put dishes away.

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znpy
I can confirm.

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reiichiroh
CTL-F on article and here on HN, searched for "sex" and found 0 article must
not be accurate.

