Dishcraft Robotics Takes Over Dishwashing From Humans

The kinds of jobs that robots are ideal for are the kinds of jobs that humans just straight up do not want to do. This is where the whole “dull, dirty, dangerous” thing comes in, but even in those categories, some jobs are duller, dirtier, or more dangerous than others. These are the jobs that we should be focusing on robotizing—not just jobs that are possible to automate, but jobs that need to be automated because you simply can’t find enough humans to reliably do them. 

One of these jobs is commercial dishwasher. It’s dull and dirty, and turnover is very high, with the average human quitting after just over a month and around 30 percent of dishwashing jobs going unfilled, according to one estimate. And if your dishwater 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. 

Today, a startup called Dishcraft Robotics is announcing a new robotic dish cleaning system, designed to minimize the time and effort that humans spend scrubbing dishes. Brought to you by some of the folks behind Neato Robotics and Dash Robotics, the San Carlos, Calif.-based Dishcraft uses some clever engineering and practical constraints to make sure that dishes are done cleaner, faster, better, and cheaper.