This is an interesting prototype. The hand has enough control to pick up glasses and the device is mounted on a rail that extends the length of the counter.
The device is controlled by a camera mounted over the arm. Take a look at this short video of the dish washing robot arm in action.
I'm in favor of any robots designed to perform tasks like dishwashing, even though they aren't full humanoid bots like ARMAR the kitchen robot, for example.
Fans of Robert Heinlein may recall the plans that he had for Flexible Frank, one of the robots from his 1956 novel The Door Into Summer, which had a Thorsen Memory Tube
...you need cause Flexible Frank to clear the table and scrape the dishes and load them into the dishwasher only once, and from then on he could cope with any dirty dishes he ever encountered.
Better still, he could have an electronically duplicated Thorsen tube stuck into his head and could handle dirty dishes the first time he ever encountered them . . - and never break a dish.
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Gaia - Why Stop With Just The Earth?
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'...to build up a video picture would require, say, ten million decisions every second. Mike, you're so fast I can't even think about it. But you aren't that fast.'