3 ms·

Here's one idea: sensor-based washing. I doubt anyone is currently doing this, but the idea can at least hold water (ba-dum-tss). You'd keep the dumb maximum s

Here's one idea: sensor-based washing. I doubt anyone is currently doing this, but the idea can at least hold water (ba-dum-tss). You'd keep the dumb maximum spray-area approach for the pre-wash & rinse cycles, but replace the main wash cycle with a "smart-nozzle" approach that uses a radar (or some other non-optical sensor) to detect surfaces and apply a directed spray. Theoretically, that would save on energy costs/impact (heating water costs way more than running a SoC/radar), even if the overall wash quality wouldn't really be improved much in most cases. Plus... the technology would be super marketable, imagine the commercials!

rsynnott 5y ago
Washing machines at least have been doing fancy stuff like this to some extent for a long time.
vel0city 5y ago
My washing machine detects how much stuff is on the various racks and will adjust its time running the sprayers for each rack based on how much stuff is there and the turbidity of the water (how dirty) it is for the given levels. So if the top rack is pretty empty or just glasses which are mostly clean, while the bottom rack is full of pots with lots of grease, it will spend more time operating the sprayers on the bottom rack than the top rack.