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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
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.
The real question is: Can it fold paper more than 7 times?
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.
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.
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
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)
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
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.
Don’t you mean a 25% chance? C programming and folding socks are uncorrelated skills and if we assume there is really a 50/50 split with no gender bias that would give a 25% chance that she is both a better coder and worse at folding socks.
Or are you implying that C programmers can’t fold socks? As someone who has written a few C programs and folded a few socks, I find that outrageously offensive.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
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.
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Well, sure, it'd make it easier, but now that this technology has been shown - technology that can fold a solid-colored towel or a multicolored towel or anything - it must be developed and furthered as-is. If companies were to try to lock us into their towels so that our robots and towels would be compatible, we'd have comparisons to Microsoft and complaints about technology being held back and whatnot in an instant.
If we know that the robot can fold any towel, any color, any pattern, then that's what has to be developed in order to look good, impressive, or any other adjective that would be favorable to a manufacturer.
Let q be a radix > 1. I am in ur base-q, killing 10 d00ds.
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.
Is it also running Folding@Home in the background?
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