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Berkeley Gets Willow Garage Robot To Fold Towels
kkleiner writes "Researchers at UC Berkeley used Willow Garage's PR2 robot to fold towels. The UCB programming used some innovative visual scanning techniques, allowing the PR2 to pick up a towel, find its corners, and fold it on a table perfectly. According to the paper presented at the 2010 ICRA (PDF), the robot successfully completed 50 out of 50 attempts to fold a single towel, and also folded 5 out of 5 towels when they were presented in a group. Is watching a robot do laundry really that exciting? Hell yes — wait until you see the video! UC Berkeley used a Willow Garage robot to develop their own sophisticated robotics program. That validates the whole premise of the PR2 — faster development by letting researchers use a common platform. Score one for open source robotics!"
Obviously, this robot knows where its towel is.
Ezekiel 23:20
The real question is, will it match my socks?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
That is truly awesome.
But before I file for my divorce, I need to know if they also were able to match socks from the laundry.
They could name it Ford Prefect, but a more suitable name would be Fold Perfect.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
At least it wasn't built by Cirrus Cybernetic Corp. Any being that knows where its towel is is not something to be messed with.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
The real question is: Can it fold paper more than 7 times?
I'll get excited when it doesn't get pissed at me for forgetting Valentine's Day.
If it can distinguish what type of clothing goes on hangers, I'm all in for eliminating laundry from my weekly chores.
wake me when it can handle inside-out shorts or a brassiere. (i know... why would anyone want to fold a brassiere? ...well i wouldn't)
I'm sure there are some hoteliers that will be excited about reducing their staffing for for washing and folding all the towels and sheets they go through. Hospitals likely would love this too, since it wouldn't show up sick and help spread diseases on clean linens.
I, for one, welcome our hoopy frood overlords.
they took our jerbs!
This thing can pierce and twist any and all of your innards - game set and match.
Skynet: 1
Human race: Dead
Now only if I could get my wife to do that...
I, for one, welcome our new robotic towel folding overlords.
There may be no "I" in team, but there's also no "F" in way.
Teach it to whine about dinner and we'll have the perfect child-substitute.
In Soviet Russia robot folds you?
like Marvin the Paranoid Android for several million years outside the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
We are but towels to the robots, existing only to be folded, and patted neatly into place on a table. Mark this day.
SmashTech - No smashing of tech involved
I am sorry - I could not get it out of my head that this looked very much like something that would have been made by that intrepid duo!
My fiance and I have different towel folding approaches. She implements a "thirds" method, whereas I go "halves" until it looks approximately the same size as the others in the closet. I hear about it on a bi-weekly basis.
If this thing could fold halter tops, (especially the ones with the built in bra things) I would happily shell out some loot for one. Women's clothing is a strange, strange beast.
0 = 1 + e^(Alt something)
If it could cook, too, there would be no more need for women!
OK, I expected him to be more accurate than I am at folding towels, but faster too?!?
Sure, the robot can fold the towel. But can it make it into a swan?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
How do I get one?
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
The video seems impressive until you realize it has been sped up 50 times actual speed... it took more than an hour and a half to fold 5 towels!
Cool, but very far from anything practical.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Someone should throw in a bra in the pile and see the robot explode ! (j/k)
then I believe the device would have malfunctioned when you did not mention the exact location of the towel by throwing some stuff on your face !
Robots should be kept barefoot and in the kitchen... ;)
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Although it didn't seem like anything great from the summary, I went ahead and went to the article and watched the videos.
I found it very creepy. The way it handled the towels and turned them while 'looking' for the next step. It was reminiscent of what I felt was a child learning to fold towels (although, I'm fairly certain the robot wasn't doing any learning). For whatever reason, and despite it's appearance, this robot seems more human than any other robot I've seen previously.
I wouldn't mind if I just need to take all my washed clothes in front of the robot and have it work overnight to fold all for me, especially if it saves $$$ than one capable to retrieve the clothes from the washer. The folding part is boring and laborious.
If it could fold fitted sheets I'd be impressed.
This attitude might be one of the reasons why geeky types have a hard time acquiring wife units. In reality, the wife is the programmer and you-know-who is the device.
I'm sure there are some hoteliers that will be excited about reducing their staffing for for washing and folding all the towels and sheets they go through. Hospitals likely would love this too, since it wouldn't show up sick and help spread diseases on clean linens.
The machine that washes your dishes: does it look like the Jetson's robot maid Rossie?
The biggest mistake a venture capitalist can make - Mark Twain is the is classic example - is to back a machine that does the job the way a man or woman would do it.
With a U.S. patent and a sheaf of testimonials, Mrs. Cochrane turned to the invention of something as complex as any dishwasher: a company to market a new invention.
Because she wasn't adamant about what part of humanity she would bless with the dishwasher, Josephine Cochrane traveled to Chicago in about 1887 to make another start in salesmanship, targeting institutions and hotels. A rich friend advised her to try the manager of the Palmer House and then introduced her to him, with the result that she received an order, and a momentous one at that. The manager may have been easily sold in deference to Mrs. Cochrane's rich friend, a resident of the hotel, but nonetheless the Palmer House was the most famous hotel in the country, and some of its reputation immediately began to spill over to the Garis-Cochran. The same friend next told her to try the Sherman House, another big hotel in the city. That would have to be a "cold" sale, though, with no cozy introduction. She went to the hotel by herself and sat down in the ladies' parlor, just off the lobby, submitting a request for a moment of the manager's time. It was granted.
"You asked me what was the hardest part of getting into business," Mrs. Cochrane recalled for the reporter for the Record-Herald. "That was almost the hardest thing I ever did, I think, crossing the great lobby of the Sherman House alone. You cannot imagine what it was like in those days, twenty-five years ago, for a woman to cross a hotel lobby alone. I had never been anywhere without my husband or father --the lobby seemed a mile wide. I thought I should faint at every step, but I didn't--and I got an $800 order as my reward."
By 1888 the company was offering two basic models, each of which could be designed in a variety of sizes. In the smaller, hand-operated one, the dish rack was placed in a box-shaped canister and hot soapy water was sprayed over it by means of hand-pumping. Afterward, hot rinsing water had to be hand-poured over the dishes. The second version was larger and more involved mechanically. It had dish racks on either side that moved back and forth under a stream of soapy water. The beauty of the mechanical assembly designed by Mrs. Cochrane was that it allowed someone other than a stevedore to operate it, as it moved crates of heavy dishes even while pumping water straight up from the bottom. The initial idea was that even the slightest maid or housewife would be able to operate the machine. It was designed to be fitted with a motor, which was sold separately. At peak capacity a Garis-Cochran could wash and dry 240 dishes in two minutes. The Woman Who Invented the Dishwasher
Ah but when I am wifeless I just chuck all the stuff into a convenient pile. Its my wife who wants them folded and would presumably be the market for a machine like this.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
No, it's boring as hell. That's what I love about it. 99% of the crap that I want a robot to do for me is boring - that's the point of having a mindless automaton do it while I'm at the lake.
Do you have ESP?
If you have a group of these robots in a hotel laundry room, or the locker room, will they figure out how to snap each other in the butt with the towels???
if not, will it throw in the towel?
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
But can it snap a towel at the refrigerator's butt?
so wait, why would i want a wife?
With the recent invention of a laundry folding robot, many are asking if robots are safe for family use.
A local area woman is questioning the safety of robots in the home after her husband built one to mow the lawn. She says the only thing it did was scare off the neighbor's dogs, and she can't imagine bringing a robot into the house.
Still, others think the technology is promising. Scientists say that robots are getting better all the time, and recent improvements have made chainsaw and butcher-knife fueled rampages a thing of the past. "We're learning more about robot psychology every day," says a prominent climatologist, " And things are getting better. Do we completely understand erratic behavior? Well, not completely. But we're working on it, and erratic episodes are much fewer and farther between. I've had a robot living with me for almost 6 months without incident."
Local men are enthusiastic about laundry robots, as most of them want to spend less time doing household chores. A few of them are already using the robots. One even taught it to mow - though he warned our correspondent to stay off his lawn.
Still, many people are uncomfortable with having a machine become a part of the family. Some say it just isn't natural to talk to a bucket of bolts, and feel awkward addressing as master something they regard as an overgrown tin can. Whether they're bound for the trash heap, or ruling the roost, one thing is certain: robots are changing lives in unimaginable ways.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Wouldn't it make the problem easier if the towels had some corner highlighting and a pattern to show the orientation? Then the company that sells you the towel folding robot can be sure to have a towel customer for a while.
(C) Kaki Sain, 2011. By reading this, you have illegally copied my property to your brain.
I want to see what it would do if a cat jumped up on the table...
With the video sped up 50x (or 30x)... not impressed.
Now this and this or this... which all are at normal speeds... much more impressive. And all have existed for at least a year...
I'm a believer of OSS, but the above gets a 'no new news here' tag in my book.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1591778&cid=31706790
Utterly hilarious. Watch Clone/Clown in the url above have to resort to name calling and doing anything but answering up to his own blatant technical mistakes, lies, and other stupidity. Clone the trolling clown got his ass knocked the hell down (and out). LMAO - Your trolling mouth wrote checks your dim brain can't cash, and that's that CLOWN!
Nowadays nobody expect sexist jokes to actually represent anyone's views, just like those about an ethnicity or profession. All of these stereotype-based jokes are based on an inaccurate depiction taken from a notorious subset (immigrants, ambulance-chasing lawyers) or outdated data (once-real gender gap). A real slight has to be *believable*, and to be offended by something that outlandish is just being overly defensive.
I wonder if in this case it's appropriate to say... WHOOSH
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Huh? When did the overlord meme go back in style?
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
1) Sorts the clothes and places dirty close in baskets.
2) Washes each load at correct temperature and water level based on load.
3) Transfers clothes from washer to dryer or rack depending on a care tag.
4) When clothes are dry it folds and places in drawers, on hangers, etc.
Is that so much to ask???
However, the PR2 only successfully folded panties 48 out of 50 times. At the end of the test 2 panties were missing. The PR2 only stood there and grinned and said nothing.
The only thing cooler than a robot that does laundry -- is a robot that does laundry, that has an Ethernet switch for a hat.
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
To quote the robot: "Here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to fold a towel. Call that job satisfaction, cause I don't."
I am officially gone from
They could slightly modify "The Gambler" for this robot, and have it sing to itself:
"I've got to know how to hold 'em, know how to fold 'em..."
The first step toward a truly autonomous robot will be when it says, "Fold your own damn towel."
Did anyone else notice that the robot flaps the towel if it can't find a corner?
Let's see you conquer the human race when I put a circular towel in the laundry basket, motherfucker.
Is it also running Folding@Home in the background?
For optimal comment enjoyment, take red pill now.
the way forward in robotics is to have at first many many robots
co-operate on a job, then gradually integrating them into one.
so the first-gen robot army elements become a leg, a finger or an eye
of one single unit. that's how nature did it, maybe we should too?
2 cents.
I for one welcome our towel-folding, wantonly destructive, data-beam shooting Cylon overlords... She looks a lot like Rosie The Robot from the Jetsons. What could possibly go wrong?