I don't mean to single out IBM, really, but it's sometimes hard not to. After all, when you are consistently the #1 patent filer, you're going to get noticed. And when you appear to be the #1 filer of accelerated examination applications, your're going to get noticed by folks like me who look for those things. So this one that came up today caught my eye, though not for 101 issues -- it appears to be quite, um, clean.
Instead, this patent reminded me of a sign in a pizza place near where I grew up that always gave us a chuckle: "Banks sell no pizza; We cash no checks."
U.S. Patent No. 7,524,380 Energy efficient dishwashing Filed: July 31, 2008 Assignee: IBM 1. A method for controlling a dishwasher in a energy efficient manner, the method comprising: sensing weight, volume, and location of items disposed in each of a plurality of compartments of the dishwasher, said sensing being accomplished via a plurality sensors disposed in each of said plurality of compartments, wherein said sensing occurs prior to a start of a washing cycle and drying cycle, wherein said sensing further includes sensing at least one of electrical conductivity and transparency of a cleaning solution used in the dishwasher; communicating sensed data from said sensors to a controller; calculating a desired length of time for said washing cycle and said drying cycle based on said sensed data, and calculating a desirable amount of said cleaning solution to be used in each of said plurality of compartments based on said sensed data, said cleaning solution including at least water and detergent, wherein said calculating further includes calculating for a desired temperature, detergent, and detergent ratio of said cleaning solution based on said sensed data; implementing said washing cycle and said drying cycle for said length of said time, wherein a smaller sensing of said weight and said volume results in a shorter amount of time than would be spent based on a larger sensing of said weight and said volume; commanding said dishwasher to direct said amount of said water and said detergent to each compartment of said plurality of compartments, wherein any of said plurality of compartments sensed to include fewer or none of said items will receive less of said water and detergent than any of said plurality of compartments sensed to include more of said items; transmitting efficiency data from said controller to a medium viewable by a user, said efficiency data being based on said calculating, said implementing, said commanding, and said sensing of said weight, said volume, and said location of said items, wherein said transmitting includes suggesting movement of some of said items from one of said compartments to another of said compartments based on said sensing of said location of said items in said compartments, wherein said efficiency data includes a predicted cost for said implementing and said commanding; connecting said controller to an internal or external internet network and transmitting said efficiency data to a computing resource connected to said internet network, wherein said computing resource is said medium viewable by said user; minimizing usage of electrical energy and said water via said implementing, said commanding, and said transmitting; and transmitting dishwasher control commands implemented by said user from said computing resource to said controller. |
Commentary: Since when is IBM in the dishwasher business? Kind of like Microsoft's recent agriculture patent, I suppose. There was also a patent to erstwhile Lehman Brothers on a "Method and system for analyzing commuting routes" in 2007 that remarkably issued in under seven months (and with some of the least formal drawings ever -- see Fig. 6), but even that one appears to have been developed and used in-house for Lehman's employees. (Barclays owns the patent now. I hope this patent's traffic analysis performs better than Lehman's market analysis did.) I somehow doubt that IBM's engineers were in the company kitchen eating lunch when they just decided to design a better dishwasher controller. But I could be wrong.
Hard to know the stories behind these outliers, but I'd be curious.
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