Patent ID: 8771433

Claim:
A dishwasher comprising: a box-shaped casing having an inner wash chamber that communicates externally through an opening formed in one of the lateral walls of said casing; at least one dish rack basket housed inside said wash chamber to house dishes/cutlery within a hold volume bounded by two predetermined boundary planes; an emitting device configured to generate at least one light beam in a direction coplanar with a reference plane lying in one of said predetermined boundary planes; a detecting device to detect when the light beam is interrupted by dishes/cutlery in said reference plane; and an electronic unit for generating an alert in response to the detecting device detecting that the light beam has been interrupted by dishes/cutlery in said reference plane to alert the user to the dishes/cutlery in said reference plane, wherein none of the at least one light beams are interrupted when the dishes/cutlery are entirely contained within the hold volume.