Dishcraft Robotics Takes over Dishwashing from Humans | Hacker News Reader

Dishcraft Robotics Takes over Dishwashing from Humans

spectrum.ieee.org

29 pointsheadalgorithm48 comments

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

> 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.

It goes even further:

Many kitchens, it turns out, don’t need their own Dishcraft robot. What they do need is clean dishes, so Dishcraft offers “dishes as a service,” exchanging clean dishes for dirty ones and then washing them in a centralized location.

That’s a whole lot of not gonna happen.

Why in the world would you drive dishes around town, and keep a double set on hand, or possibly a triple set on backup for when the service goes down

It happens with linens for hotels, why wouldn't it work for dishes?

Weight, breakage, flexibility and space constraints for dishes are much different

Also, someone needs to scrape, check, pack and unpack the boxes. I can't see this saving money, especially at places with high turnover.

But if there aren't enough dishwashers, then the ones that they do have quit because they're overworked, then the rest of the kitchen staff has to pitch in and THEY are overworked too, and then the customers get slow service, it's like dominos. I can see just falling back to dish delivery

This is actually very common in China. The cutlery comes all wrapped in plastic on every table, it's washed in a centralized location

Interesting. I'm always surprised by just how little I know about China.

...and then my relatives open them up and insist on rinsing each piece with boiling water anyway (conveniently always provided as part of the tea service).

Also, in recent years, many restaurants have started to charge for the wrapped plastic cutlery + dishes, usually 1 RMB for cutlery and 2-5 RMB for the dish set (you don't get to keep them - it's basically just the fee for the cleaning + packaging). Perhaps they're trying to encourage people to bring their own, which is a bit of a weird (but probably environmentally friendly) idea.

Sounds like an environmental nightmare. It may be a drip in an ocean, but it's so completely unnecessary. Or am I missing something, apart from the human psyche ("it feels more fresh that way!")?

No your probably right, probably is pretty wasteful

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.

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

I think custom dishware is key, and will certainly catch on. One of the major problems with household robots is working in an environment designed for humans. Small changes like putting RFID style tags or magnetic strips in dishes mean a robot that clears away your dirty dishes becomes a possibility, without relying on expensive and error prone computer vision or human-equivalent hands.

> RFID style tags or magnetic strips in dishes

Probably not though because the hard bit of robots picking stuff up isn't really identifying the objects. Magnets might help, but you can't put them in metal or transparent items anyway.

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.

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

Labour is even cheaper on the lower end; the technological solution wins at scale.

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.

Yes, this robot scrubs plates before putting them into a dishwasher. That's really unnecessary and it does it extremely slow. Here's a video of someone showing how fast it can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx-aak2zK_Y

>it yeets some high pressure water

I feel old.

That's not Ludditism, it's good engineering intuition.

I think the issue is that loading and unloading is still quite a lot of work. However this robot doesn't seem to really solve that (probably because it's a really hard problem).

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.

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).

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.

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?

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.

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.

It washes only one type of dish?

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

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.

Double buffering. Obvious solution that doesn't work all that well in practice - unless you only order food and never prepare it yourself, you'll likely have more dishes than you can fit in a single dishwasher. You'll quickly find yourself having one diswasher in the middle of the cleaning program, the other half-filled with clean dishes, and nowhere to put the dirty ones you're carrying.

True. Except, maybe an improvement on having one. Dishes filling up the sink because you haven't unloaded the dishwasher yet. SO yes what you say will happen, so a couple of dishes get put into the sink, or you have to put a couple of the clean dishes into a cupboard. Still better than putting away abunch of dishes, or having a bunch of dishes in your sink.

This only works for as long as the remaining clean dishes are many enough to serve your current number of guests. Otherwise you have a (too few) clean dishes and a bunch of dirty dishes. So you add a third dishwasher? Pretty soon you'll be running a filesystem of dishes there..

No. You have one mostly empty dishwasher and one mostly full dishwasher. You then use dishes from the mostly-full one, and put them into the other. Yes, there are still clean plates in there. No, it does not matter.

or just put the several dishes left into the cupboard. Not 100% does not mean not useful.

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.

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...

I've thought about it, but have never had the chance

Finnish draining-cupboards are a more low-tech way to avoid the problem. They're cupboards with racks for placing cups, and the water falls directly into the sink/counter beneath:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dish_drying_cabinet

> 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.

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.

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

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.

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

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