Slashdot Mirror
Robots That Serve Beyond The Vacuum
Tim Brown of Mobile Robotics writes "While everyone has been debating the abilities of new robotic vacuum cleaners and their varying price tags, Siemens has quietly announced they have developed a 'Dressman' robot that will iron your clothes! (my least favorite household chore). Rumoured to be priced at US$1700 it seems expensive for an iron. But it appears that the Roomba's best work might be that it is ushering in a new era of innovation in home products. (Note very cool picture with the article.)"
Man, for $1700 this thing better do military creases.
The World is Yours.
More or less, I'm your average geek. I telecommute, but my state of dress on any given day is not much different than when I worked in an office. That being said, how often do men really need to iron their clothes?
I don't recall ironing a single piece of clothing since my job interview more than four years ago and that is the only time I've used an iron in my twenty-seven years. Hell, I only even own an iron because an ex-girlfriend needed it for her clothes - and I needed it for an upcoming project which including using an applique.
Still, if you're a snazzy dresser and you wear clothing that tends to need ironing and you're a single person, I suppose this is a decent product. Especially if you have the money to burn.
It really seems that this device (which reminds me of those punching-bag exercisers I've seen on television a couple times) is geared more toward the garment pressing industry than a home-user.
Personally, the only robot I'm interested in is a sex-slave android and I don't think we'll be seeing any of those in my lifetime.
The robot looks nice
How about instead of spending $1700 on a robot, just take your clothes out of the dryer and hang them up quickly enough that they don't have time to wrinkle?
It works for me...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
How is THAT a robot? It's a dummy that inflates with hot air(that you have to put the shirts on yourself, no less) that is supposed to save you $1700 worth of your time somehow.
Yeah right.
I would expect such blatant racism on Fark, but on Slashdot? Mods please ban this asshole.
people here are drooling over the future prospect of the Cherry 2000.
is a robot that will pickup, wash, dry, iron, fold, and put away your clothes.
As well as wash, dry, and put away your dishes.
O yeah,
Mow the lawn and wash the car while its at it.
That way I can use all my spare time exercising.
till blow-up dolls start doing the work for you? you know there has to be a company working on it somewhere. i just want to know when their IPO is. no, really.
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I see a new feature for RealDolls. Just make their skin a thermoelectric heating element, and...
Shirts pressed while you wank!
---
Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
While it is nice that the home robotics field is getting some attention, I believe this is a nearly useless device. Most of us (even us uber-geeks) saw our mothers iron clothes once or twice in our lives. I could easily spend $30 on a nice iron, and learn a new ironing technique (Google, anyone?) and iron my clothes from time to time. There is probably a .3% market demand for this robot that simply irons clothes, mainly because of the price and the size.. Seems like an enormous waste of space to me, when an iron is 1/30th of the size, and can fit easily in my closet on a shelf or in a drawer, for that matter. Come on, you researchers: Work on something that I can use in my every day life that will help me, yet won't break the bank. As of yet, I have not seen any robotic piece of equipment that does this. (Don't bother mentioning the robotic vacuum, I've read reviews.)
However, I can't have my post be all negative: I am happy that some research is being put into these things. Once the technology matures, heck.. I may be finding myself buying something similar to one of these. =)
f you get a wife, you can wake to freshly ironed clothes everyday, the bad side, they talk back,need to be fed, and you have to go through a wedding, which is more than $1700, but a wife won't crash or need to be charged hmmm... decision decisions....
I think you mean "girlfriend". Let me explain...
The shirt ironing robot won't blow you. Neither will a wife. A shirt ironing robot won't cook dinner for you. Neither will a wife.
What you need is a girlfriend, you can get your shirt ironed, your meals cooked, and your penis sucked. Wives and shit ironing robots don't even come close.
Yes, I am divorced.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Just like this one, you set a dial for how well you want your bread (shirt) toasted (ironed). You then depress a lever (press a button) and the robot then toasts (irons) your bread (shirt). It boasts an air filter so that the air due to convection doesn't contain any dust or dirt particles to contaminate your toast (shirt). It also has special insulation so that the outside doesn't get scorching hot -- only the internal elements are hot enough to heat the bread (shirt). But the Robotic Toaster is a bargain at only $795, less than half the price of the Robotic Ironing machine.
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It's a non-obvious solution for a long-standing problem using technology that's been around for over a hundred years.
but there are actually businesses that will wash and iron your shirts for you, and they will even fold them (imagine that!). If you need an "emergency shirt" that you can just wash yourself, you can get a no-iron shirt, too.
And for vacuuming, you could always hire someone (but, unlike a robot, a cleaner will raise eyebrows at leftover pizzas and Playboy magazines).
Ironing
Not all innovations toward laziness or progress are one way. Something that is designed for the consumer market may easily be applied in other more useful fields, and vice versa, like the material in excersize pants being used for cooling systems, the material in shuttle windows being used for fogless ski goggles, computers being used by people other than scientists... Who is to say that this innovation won't be useful in other fields down the road, it uses quite a few pieces of technology which could easily be applied to industry and NASA.
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
1. overclock the air compressor
2. press start
3. watch the robot inflate like the incredible hulk
4. duck flying buttons
5. rinse and repete
flinging poop since 1969
A lot of people mention the rarity of ironing shirts, but while the Slashdot crowd may not, I know engineers, accountants, and businessmen who wear freshly washed and ironed shirts each and every day. If they make $50000 a year working 2000 hours (40 hours, 50 weeks), that's $25/hr. Say they spend 5 minutes ironing a shirt every busines day (~250), that's $520 of life they waste every year ironing. While still not enough to justify having something iron for them, especially as no one measures their life relative to how much they'd make on the job, there is enough savings to warrant consideration by people who iron in bulk, like Dry Cleaners. It may even be useful in a Laundramat (Probably not, but who knows?).
Yet another signature that refers to itself. The irony and humor is dead.
The problem with home clothes steamers is that they don't actually get rid of wrinkles, but rather uniformly wrinkle the clothes; albeit with smaller wrinkles.
Wouldn't the result be the same if one used this "robot"?
It would appear it is a combination of the weight of an iron, or press, and the heat that presses out the wrinkles, not just the heat alone.
So, at least literally, a robot is anything that labors. Check the clicky to see more of it's literary history, or read some of Isaac Asimovs numerous essays on robots.
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One thing I thought right away when I read the article was - will the shirt look right without creases? I think a proper crease is an important as the smoothness of the material when considering a well-ironed garment. With the way it just inflates under a sirt, you'd get a smooth shirt but no creases anywhere!
They make a good point about the material lasting longer though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The consumer magazine Test-Achats/Test-Aankoop in Belgium has reviewed this item in its current issue. You can find the full article on their web site, although it is only accessible for subscribers.
In summary, here is what the article says about this "robot" that irons your clothes: the quality of the results is not that good, there are still some wrinkles left in the shirts (this is OK if you wear them under something else, but not if you want to look smart wearing only a shirt). They gave it an "average" rating for the quality, while most of the traditional irons get a "good" or "very good". One of the main selling arguments for this expensive item is that it irons your shirts for you while you can do something else during the 10 minutes that it takes to do its work. But in practice, you need 2 minutes to put the shirt on and 2 minutes to remove it once it is ready. So if you have several shirts this device lets you do something else for one hour, but only in slices of 10 minutes so this is not ideal.
So it does not beat the good old low-tech iron...
-Raphaël
But you know what? I like working because I like my job and I like my income and I like enjoying my money by doing and buying things that I otherwise would be unable to. I think it's grossly unfair to expect a man to bring home the bacon (as society generally does) but then for the woman he sets-up with to turn around and say that he works too much. Where do you think the money that both people enjoy comes from? It doesn't grow on trees.
We've all heard the stories of women who cheated on their hard working men with greasy mooching losers who have lots of free time because "he doesn't pay enough attention to me and is always working".
I would much rather be well-off (certainly not rich by any means) than poor, regardless of relationship status. Being poor or having a hard time making ends meet doesn't make for enjoyable relationships, even in the best of pairings. Especially if you ever want to have kids and afford to help them with college and give them a decent start in life.
As for hard working - you've got me there. I would like to be more social, but I can't manage to stay away from home (where I work) very long without feeling like I should be getting something done and like I'm wasting time. As it is, I have not left my home (as in, I have literally not gone outside the front door) since Christmas of 2003. I sleep a few feet from my work desk and only nap when I can't possibly keep my eyes open any longer to work.
I know I can't live like this forever, but I'm only in my late 20's. I have another 15 years before I need to worry about settling down, by which time I sure hope to have enough saved up to spend all my time enjoying "life".
But I disagree with the assertion that anyone who is working 60 or 80 hours a week is "marrie to their job". Those are often the hours required to stay employed. There are always other people who are willing to work that much and will happily replace you.
I don't feel sorry that I am consumed by my job at all. I love my job. I'm lucky to have this career and I wake up and get to work every morning with a smile on my face, eager to confront challenges and puzzles and learn. I feel that it's when your job is terrible and you hate it and you don't want to be there but have to (for the money) that you're missing your life.
If someone enjoyed painting and spent most of their time painting, would you say they were wasting their life? What if about actors or authors? It's only a waste if it's not something you like doing. Hell, to me, being a car mechanic seems like a waste of life, to me. But I bet there are thousands of dedicated people who love cars and working on them that live for it.
And maybe I'll meet someone some day that makes me stop and say "I need to work 20 less hours per week so I can spend 20 more hours with them". And when I do, I'll probably know that's the right person.
The people I feel sorry for are those like my younger friends who are in their very early twenties and getting married and have a kid on the way, but have no education, career or money. They may have "love" and spend a lot of time together, but that doesn't make up for the hardships they and their child are going to have and the major relationship troubles that will result from never being able to take care of the bills.
For this price we could get 2 full time employees in India ironing clothes for the whole year. So what remains is to develop a technology to teleport the clothes back and forth. Man I am patenting this :-)
Watch Out!!
I'm a tailor, and I teach advanced classes about shirts. You don't need this "robot". You shouldn't have to iron your cotton shirts. Here's how to never iron, but have your cotton shirts look like you did:
First, open every button on the shirt and remove plastic collar stays (if any) before washing.
When you dry, cotton shirts can be dried on "hot" in most American home dryers, but I use "medium" when I go to a laundramat because their dryers are hotter.
When you take your shirts out of the dryer, if they feel bone dry to the touch, you've over-dried them. You should be drying them less. They should feel as if they have just the slightest hint of moisture left in them, which should evaporate naturally within about a minute or so. Over-dried shirts will be wrinkly. Properly-dried shirts shouldn't be wrinkly.
If your shirts are dried properly but are coming out of the dryer wrinkly, your loads of laundry are too big. Wash and dry a little less stuff in each load. The general rule is, when you put the wet clothes in the dryer, they should take up a bit less than half the space inside the dryer.
Finally, you should get to the dryer as soon as it stops (not 10 minutes later: right away!) and take out your shirts and hang them up on clothes hangers. Do not use wire hangers, use plastic hangers (such as those available cheaply at Target or Kmart) or wood hangers. Wire hangers can cause the shirt to get funny misshapen wrinkles in the shoulders, which can only be removed by re-washing.
If you do these things properly, your cotton shirts will look smooth and professional with no ironing.
my local 5'Sec laundry in Kuala Lumpur has a similar gadget that's made out of an inflatable canvas sack attached to the steam generator they use for all their industrial irons. The Bangladeshi guys running the laundry use it more for long dresses and ballgowns rather than shirts. I'd take a picture to show you, but I'm in India right now and it's a helluva long way to go for karma points ;-)
Yeah, I wrote about this yesterday on www.sciscoop.com and I refused to call it a robot, no matter how many times the articles called it that. Sure, technically it could be considered a robot, but no more so than my washing machine. Even less, really, since at least my washing machine has moving parts.
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Looks vaguely humanoid, no intelligence, fills up with hot air... It's not a robot, it's a politician!
From what I can tell, this "robot" can't give you creases in your shirt sleeves. Speaking as someone who has worn both a "real" uniform and the "corporate" uniform, I can tell you that a single, razor-sharp crease in the proper position on the sleeve is an absolute necessity. People who have worn uniforms notice this right away. Even those who have not themselves worn uniforms can tell you someone looks "better" when their shirt sleeves are properly pressed, even if they cannot articulate just why that is.
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