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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!"
They could name it Ford Prefect, but a more suitable name would be Fold Perfect.
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You don't need this level of sophistication just to fold towels. The robot could just kind of flatten it out by tugging on different corners until it's flat, and then grabbing two corners and folding it over.
Even easier would be just a big machine that pulls in a bin of linens and separates them onto rollers, which deposit them in piles.
TFA states that the robot is not the best model to fold towels. It does demonstrate "open source" robotics. At one time, computers were dedicated, single use, machines. Now, an off-the-shelf robot can be programmed for various tasks. That's the point.
You'd have a splendid wife if she could program robots like that!