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Eric Schmidt: People want dish-washing robots more than any other kind
- randomdrake 9y agoFun 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."
- hawski 9y agoI 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 ;)
- Delmania 9y ago> So I understand that it is supposed to be more than a dishwasher, but what then? Load and unload the dishwasher. (Edit) Also remove the scraps of food that are too big. Maybe clear the table as well.
- osel 9y agoIf you want two dishwashers, you could try a dish drawer [0]. My previous house had one, the current place is just a basic normal dishwasher - the dish drawer is something I really miss. [0] https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/kitchen/dish-washers/dishdrawer.html https://www.fisherpaykel.com/us/kitchen/dish-washers/dishdra...
- majewsky 9y ago> 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 9y agoWe don't buy anything dishwasher-incompatible any more.
- Delmania 9y agoBuild 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.
- amelius 9y agoThe easiest solution is to buy two dishwashers, one for clean stuff, one for dirty stuff, and then alternate between them.
- mattnewport 9y agoI've always wanted this setup, if I ever design my own kitchen it will have this.
- grahamburger 9y agoPersonally 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.
- budbl 9y agoIn India we just get married to solve that problem.
- hawski 9y agoCurrently I have my bathroom next to the laundry room. I can't do what I have in mind in this apartment, but one day I would like to. 1. Make three slots (whites, colors, baby clothes) in higher part of the wall between the bathroom and the laundry room. 2. Get three high plastic boxes. Set one below every slot. Make a big hole at lower part of every box. That's a washing queue for every kind of clothing. 3. Place a combo washer dryer below boxes to make loading efficient. Place also something like washing powder dispenser right above the detergent drawer of the machine. 4. Use the laundry room also as a walk-in closet. So you can hang clothes straight from the machine. Sorting is done by slots. Instead of folding use cloth hangers. Ironing is mostly done by the dryer.
- windowsworkstoo 9y agoGiven everything comes pre washed, stretched and colour fast, who still bothers separating clothes these days....I do towels and linen separate to clothes at best and not even consistently
- dbg31415 9y agoBecause you still want to bleach your whites. Sheets, towels, t-shirts from the gym... bleach goes all over that stuff, and it smells great! (And yeah, anyone who doesn't have white towels is doing it wrong. Eww, can you imagine all the filthy on a towel that hasn't been bleached?!) Separate cloths by colour, and by type (glad you're doing half of that already!)... you wouldn't wash jeans with dress shirts... let the machine's auto-sense take care of the quantity / duration issues.
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- featherverse 9y agoThey're called mexicans. I'm joking, relax.
- vanderZwan 9y agoDish-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_machine https://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_and_the_magic_washing...
- Jill_the_Pill 9y agoExcept these new efficient ones work very poorly. It's not terribly ecological to replace a large appliance every other year.
- vanderZwan 9y agoI guess that to some degree that would depend on the embodied energy, but if they really only last a few years I agree (do not own a dishwasher myself because rented apartment).
- hocuspocus 9y ago> 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.
- Jill_the_Pill 9y agoWe replaced a 20-year-old machine three years ago. And then replaced the replacement last year. And then we had about six repair calls on the new one. It's been good since about August, but don't say that too loud . . . it'll hear you and break!
- siruncledrew 9y agoAs long as planned obsolescence is not engineered into them
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
- continuations 9y agoI'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 9y agoThe 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.
- jpster 9y agoHmm, I’d much rather have a robot to feed my dogs, control their access to the backyard and scoop their poop.
- timthelion 9y agoWhy 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 9y ago> 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!
- ragebol 9y agoThese 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
- znpy 9y agoI can confirm.
- forkLding 9y agoSort 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.
- patchorang 9y agoI would much rather have a robot cook for me, even if I had to wash it’s dishes.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dnautics 9y agoI don't mind dishwashing. I mind having to remember to put dishes away.
- myroon5 9y agoAll 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
- myroon5 9y agoAlthough appliances that don't beep continuously after finishing might still be my first request
- codingdave 9y agoWe had one for a while. It just didn't work as well as the separated ones, in particular, the dryer part. That wasn't our only complaint, but that was the one that made us give up on it.
- dogma1138 9y agoCombination 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 9y agoI just throw everything in together in one load. Haven't ever had any issues yet
- reiichiroh 9y agoCTL-F on article and here on HN, searched for "sex" and found 0 article must not be accurate.
- fiftyacorn 9y agoYou 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 9y agoThis 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 9y agoI 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 9y agoYeah, 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!)
- sharpercoder 9y agoI am wondering for years why Ikea does not offer dishwasherclosets as an option in their kitchens.
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- jonshariat 9y agoWhat do you do when all youre plates and bowls are dirty but the small plates and some utensils aren't dirty yet? (For example)
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- throwawaymanbot 9y agoUmmm... We have these.. they are called Dish Washers... What people actually want more than any other kind is a Dish putting away Robot.
- O1111OOO 9y ago> "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.