So is this the end to who’s-doing-the-dishes arguments?
The Information and Robot Technology Research Initiative of Tokyo University, in cooperation with Panasonic, announced on December 17 an arm-shaped robot that… wait, it doesn’t even wash the dishes: it just puts them inside the dish washing machine.
To help it grasp the most delicate of china, this kitchen assistant robot (KAR) uses data from the 23 sensors embedded in its palm and the image from a built-in camera to distinguish such food utensil characteristics as shape and material. Apparently, it can pick up plates and smaller utensils from any place and position inside the kitchen sink.
The actual performance of this feat during the unveiling, from picking up the dishes and rinsing them with running water, to lining them up inside the dish washing machine and pushing the start button, took several minutes.
As impressive as that sounds, its developers are allocating 5 to 10 years to improve the machine further to make it smaller, safer and more responsive, in addition to bringing the cost down to several hundred thousand yen (about several thousands of dollars).
All this makes you wonder: can’t you just put the dishes inside the dish washing machine by yourself? Well, you could. But others, like old people living alone or otherwise busy people might not.
As the Japanese grow old, expect more house-helper robots to be developed and make life easier for them.
{Sources: FNN News, Nikkei Net, Reuters (video)}
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