Bay Area-based robotics startup Dishcraft has unveiled a massive robotics and AI-powered dishwashing system. Like much of the rest of the industrial robotics industry, the company’s looking to automate a dull task with a high turnover rate, which amounts to about a month of employment on average.
It’s a beast of a system from the looks of it. Employees drop dishes off into stacks, which are then loaded into the robotic system up to 90 at a time. It uses a vision-based AI system to inspect the plates, cleaning them again if it finds any food remnants left.
It’s probably over the top for a vast majority of kitchens — and while we don’t have quote, it’s almost certainly price-prohibitive, as well. But the startup’s got an interesting pedigree — co-founded by Linda Pouliot and Paul Birkmeyer, who were also involved in the founding of Neato and Dash Robotics, respectively.
Dishcraft has also raised a decent chunk of capital, with more than $25 million in VC, led by Baseline Ventures, First Round Capital and Lemnos. Apparently some of the investors have a personal interest in automating kitchens.
“One of my first jobs was as a dishwasher, so I’ve seen first-hand how outdated and inefficient dishrooms are today and how important they are to the overall operations in a kitchen,” Baseline Ventures founder Steve Anderson said in a press release. “Dishcraft is bringing entirely new thinking, technology, and processes to tackle this problem, and it is long overdue.”
Dishcraft joins a growing number of robotics startups, including Zume and Miso Robotics, that are attempting to automate kitchens with the help of robotic arms. The company is currently selling customized versions of the solution to kitchen, but has not publicly released pricing.