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Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry
An anonymous reader writes with this selection from an article at Medium: "For a robot, doing laundry is a nightmare. A robot programmed to do laundry is faced with 14 distinct tasks, but the most washbots right now can only complete about half of them in a sequence. But to even get to that point, there are an inestimable number of ways each task can vary or go wrong—infinite doors that may or may not open."
It's too difficult to extract the necessary information from sensors like vision, take into account real world scenarios where crap happens, then actually carry out the task. Maybe in 20 years. I thought 20 years 20 years ago so your mileage may vary.
I married mine. She does the work quite well, hardly malfunctions but requires the occasional of hardware upgrade.
Teaching it not to throw dirty clothes that happen to be currently occupied by a human, into the industrial washer, would be a good first step.
The programs that control those robots’ actions rely upon simple “if this, then that” logic—if you pull the handle, the door opens, and you can move on to the next task. But what happens if you pull the handle and the door doesn't open?
The function returns "false" and it calls a maintenance-bot. Just like we do.
No chance of robot overlords, if they can't get the skidmarks off your fruit of the looms.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2013.808365
If you are looking for more than a laundry list, this article offers a bit more.
I come here for the love
This headline ruined my plan for how I was going to manage doing the laundry in my household for the next 30 years. Talk about depressing on a Saturday night. At least a robot could get me a beer from the fridge.
but the most washbots right now can only complete about half of them in a sequence.
The most what washbots?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
We must wait for the Chinese Laundry Bot
There's a new model out - the Series 4000.
It's called the washing machine. Laundry is a task that took a fair amount of time per item and was really hard on cloths a century ago. 98% of that has been moved to a robot.
Solution is very easy, you buy a sex bot and hire a homely old woman to be your maid. We all know that sexbots are much easier to program than maidbots.
You're right of course, but that's the SIMPLE PART. The harder part is judgement. Even the stupidest human being has a vast amount of common sense, masses of rules of thumb which they have internalized and a deceptively deep understanding of context. How would a robot even know how to classify things as clothing or not clothing? Or more to the point washable or not washable? All but the stupidest humans would hesitate to throw piece of clothing with a large wet ink stain into a laundry machine with other clothes for instance, and said humans could reason this out from first principles (IE an understanding of how the washing process works, what ink is, etc). The level at which even the most sophisticated software operates is nowhere near robust enough make those sorts of reasoned decisions except in very carefully set up situations.
And then there are the higher level dimensions to the whole thing. When is it appropriate to wash things and when not? Which things do you have a RIGHT to wash and which things do you have a RESPONSIBILITY to wash? Since the 1950's people have gone on about the "3 laws of robotics", but Asimov would have been the first to point out that such things couldn't possibly ever be imbued into a machine. Its not even just the logical and epistemological limitations of those sorts of strictures themselves, but simply that we cannot define the situations wherein they would operate or determine when they were being violated. We can't make a self-driving car because we would have to teach it things like "Its better to run over the old man than to run over the baby when you cannot avoid them both." Obviously we'll live with robot cars that simply do one or the other by chance, but to imagine that anything short of a fully conscious general AI could make that sort of decision in a 'human-like' way is patently ridiculous, and we haven't got even the slightest idea how such an intelligence would be developed.
You say 20 years, but I say 100 years. We've barely set our foot on the first step of the path to understanding how to make something like that, and the most critical challenges involved have barely been imagined.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
In addition task one is also a trivial one to solve: use a laundry hamper into which you put your dirty clothes when you want them washed. If you don't do that then the problem is not so much finding the clothes as it is reading the human owner's mind to know which clothes they want washed. Even humans doing the laundry have to have some indication which clothes should be washed.
I like machine assisted dish cleaning so much, all of the dishes we own are "dishwasher safe" except for a couple wine glasses. They aren't all labeled dishwasher safe, but in those rare cases when the dishwasher destroyed something, I made sure not to buy another dish with that weakness.
Likewise, all of the clothing I use on a regular basis have survived trips through the washer and dryer.
For me, a complete laundry system would take the clothes out of the hamper, wash and dry them, and put them away. In order to put the clothes away, the robot would need to know where they are supposed to go and how to prepare them for storage. I am not afraid of RFID tags, but if I were, there are many other options for creating labels a robot can read.
Folding clothes isn't hard once the clothing is identified, flattened and positioned. The robot readable labels take care of the identification. In exchange for something else doing the work, I am not adverse to having ferrous rings sown into key points, so the system can magnetically grab those points to spread out and align the garment in the folding station. I am not adverse to having clothes rolled up, if that turns out to be easier.
I don't require that a robot adapt to my garage sale dressers. I just need the right clothes in the morning. There are many pick and place technologies. If for some reason it is easier for the cleaning system to deal with cartridges, I can live with that. The cleaning system can load an underwear cartridge. The transport system can load the cartridge into my dresser replacement. Then the dresser replacement can dispense underwear as needed.
...For a robot, doing laundry is a nightmare. A robot programmed to do laundry is faced with 14 distinct tasks... ... ...that you DON'T design a robot to run around finding clothes.
A robot laundry would be a self-contained washing machine that could recognise the clothes which were put in the hopper above, and which would then run washes at the appropriate time. That requires hardly any intelligence - just label-reading.
It would then need to dry and iron - drying is no problem - but ironing would probably be done between two rollers, with a little bit of sorting intelligence to arrange the clothes correctly to be fed into the rollers.
Then folding and stacking - once the ironing position recognition had been done, that would be easy. Design job finished!
Why is it that ALL technology ends up with a photocopier-like machine that you have to unjam from time to time..?
"Impossible" is a bad word choice. It should be "Difficult". Robots have been created that do laundry including the folding. They're slow. But that is merely a problem of CRU, not of impossibility.
I was just going to make this comment! I love my washing machine robot.
But to add to it: If I wanted to completely automate the task of cleaning my clothes from the time I removed them, I would not have a "robot" use an existing washer and dryer.
I would think it would be more efficient to have a device that automated the entire process so it it controlled as many variables as possible.
My mother-in-law has never done her own laundry despite owning a washer and dryer. She already has a "robot" that does it for her.
The "robot" comes to her home 2X a month to wash clothes and while the clothes are being cleaned, the "robot" also tidies up around the house as well.
I like microcars
This one can turn socks inside-out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
If your Masters or Ph.D doesn't work you can always take in laundry for the next few years.
Almost all the problems they suggest could be negated by embedding an RFID tag indicating what program it's suitable for. If you throw it in the laundry bin, it's due for laundry. The number of items is equal to the number of tags. It's the stuff they don't mention that's hard, like checking my pockets, don't wash my shirts with the buttons unbuttoned or the jeans with the outside out. But those could be part of my job, if I throw it in the "ready to wash" bin it'd better be. I'm not sure I care though, because at the end of the day it's just going to be the same washing machine doing the same job.
If you want my #1 desire for a home bot these days it'd be a robot chef. I admit it, I suck at home cooking. Most of the time I can't even beat takeaway, and a good restaurant? No chance in hell. Now I realize part of that is the ingredients, but even with the good stuff you can undercook it, overcook it, burn it and in general make a mess. For a bot that could cook a gourmet meal for me every day for the next 10+ years I'd pay $100k. I'd rather drive a trash can and eat like a king than drive a Ferrari and eat microwave dinners, no question about it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Given the ubiquity of washing machines and dryers, laundry doesn't really take that much time anymore anyway (at least, not for me it doesn't).
What I could really use, though, is a robot that could automatically scrub bathtubs, toilets, and counters. Sort of the scrub-brush version of a Roomba.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The whole article does not contain one solid argument. It is utter rubbish.
where the typical follower does laundry once a season, whether it needs it or not. I think this post is wasted pixels.
Seriously?
Folding the laundry could be something we still do while putting the clothes away - as manual operations.
The rest of the issues would seem to have trivial solutions waiting for us to find - eg If the clothes aren't in the laundry hamper, sorry they don't get washed: Implied user decision.
I mean sheesh, someone concerned about a sock being left in the dryer? Just build what you can! Stop imagining problems, we'll find the missing sock with an articulated camera arm in model 2.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When I was stationed in Korea, the mysterious Mama-Sons made my dirties disappear from my room weekly, and reappear ironed and starched the next day. I don't know how the machine worked, but I do know it only cost me $20 a week.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
I wouldn't know what to do either.
I'm reading that article and it starts with "I've been doing laundry every week for almost a decade" - and then I read the number 1 on the list.
Well, there's your problem. You're a dirty slob.
As for point 2, there is no uncertainty.
Washing machines are rated for maximum load. So are dryers. So are combo machines.
A robot should be able to tell the force some object is exerting on its griper "hands" - so it doesn't rip off the door or various other objects. Voila - a built in scale.
And as we know the maximum possible amount of clothing all that is left to determine is priority.
You know... "HAL - wash my cape and my crime fighting uniform first, don't bother with T-shirts."
And the easiest and cheapest way to determine that is - bar codes.
Printed or on a label on the inside of the clothes. Which is another thing that's better done before dumping clothes in a hamper - turn it inside out.
Washing BOTH matching socks? Easy-peasy with proper QR codes.
Getting all your clothes out of the washer-drier? Again - robot knows EXACTLY which objects it has put in. If a sock gets lost... It's probably stuck in the machine and the machine might need servicing.
Inspect machine again and if object is not found alert proper authorities and move the fuck on.
"I'm sorry Dave. I couldn't find your other sock. Washing machine must have eaten it. Please don't deactivate me. I'll sing you a song. Daisy... Daisy..."
QR codes could even contain info for proper temperature and washing instructions.
Detergents already come with bar codes and in tablet/capsule/baggie form. No spilling.
There. All the programming done. No "uncertainty".
And the same QR technology can be employed on the outside of the washing machine to instruct the robot how to handle the machine properly. No need for network protocols or wireless connections or whatever.
AND it is backward compatible with old machines - just download the QR instructions from the internet, print them out and stick them to the side of your machine.
TA-DAH! Instant compatibility.
ONLY problems that actually need solving are the usual ones.
Seeing things, picking them up, handling mechanical buttons and levers.
Putting clothes in the dresser/closet though...
1 - that is not the part of the washing clothes problem.
2 - unless people start living in uniform domicile containers, this one will wait for robots that can either learn by looking at a human completing the task or some even better AI.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
What happens when you put the non - "dishwasher safe" wine glasses in the dishwasher?
what a retarded article. For one, they decided a laundry robot is an all purpose robot. Washing my clothes and folding them doesn't require tidying my bedroom or navigating my house. For me it requires one bin where i put my ready to wash clothes. My wife may require several separate bins for things that have to be treated differently. At a predetermined weight or time they are to be washed. More difficult maybe is that our clothes are hung on a line to dry. Where I am from a clothes dryer isn't usually necessary. But i am willing to change a lot of things about my house or clothes to make a robot be able to do the shit i hate. I am waiting for a roomba that actually has a vacuum not a rotating brush. But most importantly it needs to clean itself. I dont mind removing a bag full of fluff and dirt once a week from a bin but the stupid nasty tray and hair wrapped around the brush makes it not worth it at the moment.
Generally they break (or crack) or gradually turn from transparent to white translucent (normally called "cloudy"). Either way, you learn not to do that.
My laundry decisions are basically: Am I out of shirts/undies/pants? If yes then haul the dirty clothes bin to the laundry room, dump them into 2 washers, both washers are set for hot/cold and permanent press, install money and detergent, wait 30 minutes, put all clothes into 1 dryer, insert money, haul clothes home, hang/fold/whatever.
Not seeing 14 decision points here. I'm seeing pretty much 1: do I need to do laundry?
A robot chef would end up on ebay pretty much immediately, I enjoy cooking. My robot of choice would be one that would dust and vacuum. I farking hate doing those.
I would assume they have thin enough glass that the high temperatures of a dishwasher would cause them to warp and shatter. Or at least, do so often enough that the manufacturer doesn't want to promise they won't.
What if the Robot was the collection of tools like the Auto Hamper, Washing Machine, Dryer, Folding/Ironing Bot, Transport Bot?
Wait, you mean technological progress and anything resembling AI robots is incredibly difficult to implement in the real-world. I thought the singularity was 10 years away?!
This Sig does not Exist.
No matter how difficult it is to teach the robot to do the laundry, it is going to be whole lot easier than teaching my teenager to pick clothes from the floor of her bedroom. "How can you sleep in the middle of all that squalor?" .. "chill dad, I can't see the floor once I get into my bed!"
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I suppose the article is vaguely interesting in pointing out how tasks simple for a human are complex for a robot, but if the point is doing laundry... file it under "ornithopters" (flying machines with flapping wings), pre-Singer sewing machines that tried to mimic the way a human being sews, and so forth.
If we really wanted robots to do laundry, the house, washing machine, and robots would coevolve in all sorts of ways--starting with variations on the laundry chute to deliver the clothing to a single station where they wouldn't need to be sorted out from other clutters. (A simple chute? A conveyor belt? A drone?) Washer doors would be modified to be robot-friendly, and so forth and so on.
When marketers wanted reel-to-reel tape technology to be more automated, engineers didn't built clever gadgets to sense and catch the free end of a piece of tape, they designed tape cassettes.
In the 1990s I remember seeing "Pronto" machines in a factory carrying parts and assemblies from place to place. They didn't need video and pattern recognition, they just followed a wire embedded in the concrete floor that emitted an RF signal.
It's just system thinking. Automating a process by dropping a robot into the middle of it without changing the rest of the process is a silly constraint to put on a solution. A robot clever enough to climb stairs and operate any kind of existing washer is going to cost a lot more than a dumb robot that operates a washer designed to be operated by a robot.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
To be fair, doing laundry is a nightmare for humans too. That's why they use machines to do the bulk of the work.
Together, man and machine make quick work of laundry.
It would be like having a self driving car actually have hands and feet that can operate the steering wheel, tickers, gearshift etc while using eyes mounted on its head inside the car.
Probably a fembot or gynoid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... is necessary to do all the tasks correctly.
The Singularity is near!
It's called the washing machine. Laundry is a task that took a fair amount of time per item and was really hard on cloths a century ago. 98% of that has been moved to a robot.
Yeah, so they've done well with the washing part, and the drying part. Most people don't mind moving laundry over from one machine to the one next to it - takes a little time if you have to pull out the things that don't get machine dried, but really not too time consuming. The next most time consuming part is folding...so if there were a folding machine/bot, that would be a massive step forward, especially if it sorted too. People would pay good money for a folding machine.
Whoever creates and markets the machine that does this gets all the money.
Change the rules, to make the problems solvable
Ah, Kirk's old Kobawashi Maru strategy.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Seriously, roomba. I hate vacuuming. The machine just does it.
Hereâ(TM)s what a robot has to do.
Very close solution already: :-)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...
All but picking up dirty clothes, taking them to the washer, and putting them in. Heck, it was folding mixed clean clothes from the dryer five years ago.
Find the pile of dirty laundry, distinguishing it from other clutter that might be in the room.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
* But note: It IS the daily mail so grain of salt. Lol.
This is possible now. But.. an easy mitigation is to require throwing the laundry into a basket or into a laundry hole.
Pick up each item in the pile. (Uncertainty: itâ(TM)s unclear how many objects the robot will have to pick up.)
http://www.hammacher.com/Produ...
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Ro...
Put each item in a laundry basket.
Navigate to the washing machine. (Because of where the robot has to hold the laundry basket, it can obstruct some of the its sensors which means it receives less information and cannot adjust its movements as precisely.)
Depending on the type of machine, pull or lift the door to open it.
Transfer clothes into the machine.
Add detergent and/or fabric softener.
What is this "fabric softener stuff"?
Preloaded "push button" dispenser detergent has been around for 50 years.
Close the washing machine door.
Trivial. Especially with the internet of theme providing a clear "door is fully closed"
Choose the appropriate wash cycle (Delicate, Permanent Press, Heavy Duty) and start the wash.
Remove the clothes from the washing machine and transfer to the dryer. (Uncertainty: the robot doesnâ(TM)t know beforehand how many times it will need to reach in, grab the clothes, and remove them in order to get them all.)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...
Choose the type of drying cycle and start it.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...
Remove clothing from the dryer. (Uncertainty: how many times will it have to grab the clothes to get them out? Is there a sock still clinging to the inside of the machine?)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...
Fold items depending on the type of apparel.
http://research.universityofca...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom...
Puts garments away in a dresser or closet.
Can't find this-- but it's reasonable that everything "alike" could be put together on the table or hung so a human could finish the job easily. At a minimum- you'd probably have to tag the laundry in some way to identify it's target drawer or closet.
It looks like the solution is a quarter million dollars now. So 10-20 years before it's down to under five grand.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Why are so many /. submissions about restricting the scope of thought? This place used to be the playground of geniuses, not status quo churn.
Hello American Investor, I see you are interested in distributing Mr. Sparkle in your home prefecture. You have chosen wisely. -- Mr. Sparkle, a joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern.
Just have a machine in your room that has input and select. You choose clothes and it spits them out ironed, and put dirty clothes in. It washes and stores them.
I dont need the robot to pick up my laundry, I am perfectly happy with dropping the dirty stuff into a chute to the cellar where it gets processed.
That alone eliminates steps 1-6. 7 gets drastically simplified (because your machine could just use a directly-attached big tank).
The only non-trivial things remaining are: ... so this means picking the clothes apart and figuring out how they should be hung on a line, and possibly transferring them outside (though this party could be quite simple if you put your lines on a sort of movable rack)
1) I do not like dryers -> air-drying is supperior, ideally, summer this should happen outside depending on weather
2) Folding laundry afterwards (or putting it on hangers)
3) Ideally, putting it back into my wardrobe
Nanobots are just around the corner!? No need for cloth, just step out of your morning nanobot shower wearing your nanobot suit, no cloth for towels either because you're already dry and powdered. Nanobots will then get to work cleaning your teeth and styling your hair as you leave the room...
Disclaimer: If we are going to speculate about future laundry rituals, might as well go all the way to "nanobots will solve everything".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
They do seem to be making this rather more complicated by needing the robot to do laundry in an environment designed for humans.
Even if we do want the robot to pick up clothes, I think it's quite reasonable to add a laundry hopper as part of the robot and design the washing machine and robot as a pair designed to interoperate. This eliminated to difficulty of carrying the basket. The washing machine knows how much detergent to add. The washing machine will open and close its own door. Washer/dryers exist so that eliminates one machine transfer. Much of the decision making can be done with the help of RFID tags rather than labels.
So we need a machine that can read RFID tags, pick up clothes, put them into a machine, remove them from a machine, fold them and put them away.
"... infinite doors that may or may not open." Is that literally an infinite number of doors?
[quote]1.Find the pile of dirty laundry, distinguishing it from other clutter that might be in the room.
2.Pick up each item in the pile. (Uncertainty: it’s unclear how many objects the robot will have to pick up.)
3.Put each item in a laundry basket.[/quote]
This is scope creep. If you can't distinguish the task of cleaning your room from doing laundry you are trying to make this sound harder than it is, a slob, a moron, or all three.
[quote]
4.Navigate to the washing machine. (Because of where the robot has to hold the laundry basket, it can obstruct some of the its sensors which means it receives less information and cannot adjust its movements as precisely.)
[/quote]
Computer vision targets, quad-copters, dummy waiters, RF/CV aided inertial navigation, etc. Transport of laundry is classically a human problem. Once again: scope creep.
[quote]
5.Depending on the type of machine, pull or lift the door to open it.
[/quote]
Heaven forbid a boolean conditional! Why you no bilateral filter + canny edge detector? Is GameSPOT all out of used Kinect's? The "picker bots" at Amazon have indexed enough gear for "firefly" but this fool thinks feature matching/object detection is an insurmountable task because of an If/Else logic fork?
[quote]
6.Transfer clothes into the machine.
[/quote]
In a world of robots welding together cars this task is clearly impossible with a vacuum powered end-effector like the ones on a pick and place machine.
[quote]
7.Add detergent and/or fabric softener.
[/quote]
[quote]
8.Close the washing machine door.
[/quote]
Are you trolling? (Dumb question I know)
[quote]
9. Choose the appropriate wash cycle (Delicate, Permanent Press, Heavy Duty) and start the wash.
[/quote]
This one is actually legitimate but only because the PR2 is shorter than a full-sized adult so the ergonomics are all awkward. The computer vision is easy(houghcircles/approxPoly), but this problem is more appropriately solved via ZigBee, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc. in any case.
[quote]
10. Remove the clothes from the washing machine and transfer to the dryer. (Uncertainty: the robot doesn’t know beforehand how many times it will need to reach in, grab the clothes, and remove them in order to get them all.)
[/quote]
See previous & add camera+light to end effector. Additional degrees of freedom in IK model may be required.
[quote]
11. Choose the type of drying cycle and start it.
[/quote]
As someone else said: RFID, reading the wash tags with OCR is stupid when we have 2015 tools to solve problems like 2015 people.
[quote]
12. Remove clothing from the dryer. (Uncertainty: how many times will it have to grab the clothes to get them out? Is there a sock still clinging to the inside of the machine?)
[/quote]
Consequences of failure are low. Once again this is an ergonomics problem. Get creative about it or design a washing machine around the robot. I don't really care.
[quote]
13. Fold items depending on the type of apparel.
[/quote]
Folding clothes is busy work to keep 1950s women from getting bored, fucking the milkman, and getting shithammered while the kids are at school.
Use coat hangers like someone who has better things to do.
Requirements definition in other words.
People can modify their furniture/interior decor decisions around that whole "having an extra 2 hours/week" thing. Or not, it's a common misconception that Roboticists give a shit about luddite adoption. If your companies CEO wants to chase the "large button TV remote" demographic then he can justify the expense of clothes folding to himself. Once again: vacuum actuator + pinch gripper for flattening clothing on folding table.
[quote]
14. Puts garments away in a dresser or closet.
[/quote]
If you don't want your PR2 running over the dog them put CV targets in your house like a factory environment, add collision avoidance + 3d scanner in your ranch style house
We already have robots that do our laundry. We call them "washing machines." They save us from having to carry our clothes down to the river, soaking them in the current, rubbing them in the rocks, then drying them in the sun.
My washing machine senses how much I have loaded into it, adds water, meters in the soap I have placed in the soap container, then goes through an elaborate ritual of swishing my clothes around in various ways with various combinations of hot and cold water until my clothes are clean, then it signals me to move them to the dryer. In the dryer a simpler program tumbles my clothes around, adding heat as necessary, and monitoring moisture content until the clothes have reached my preset level of "doneness."
Improving upon our current level of automation seems possible. Wanting to instantly reach the end state of a magic machine that does it all without going through the design evolutions to get there might where the problem lies. For example, many people have suggested that RFID tags in clothing could carry the same information as the tags that are on many articles of clothing now; these might even be an improvement for humans, let alone machines. Older eyes trying to read tiny writing on laundry tags don't do so well (I find this as I slowly grow older). If our clothing had such tags, its easy to see how a washing machine could set itself to the right program for the load of clothes it contains. It might need some logic to achieve the best cleaning at the lowest level of risk if the clothing is of mixed types, and it might need an alarm to signal if truly incompatible clothing has been loaded, but it can be done. From there we can imagine an improvement where in we put all of our clothes into some kind of container, and the container has the ability to sort the clothing into compatible sets, then load them into a washing compartment. Since we have manipulators in our machine now, we can use them to move the sorted/washed sets of compatible clothes from the washing compartment to the drying compartment (or design a compartment that can do both washing and drying). There - robotic laundry.
But wait one might say - we still have to put the clothes into a box - why doesn't the machine go around and pick up the clothes for us? My answer would be that isn't a robotic laundry, that is a robotic butler. Which we could also develop, especially since our clothes now already have RFID tags in them. The robotic butler can even keep track of what clothing ends up where/when, deducing whether we have actually worn it, then making assumptions about whether it needs to be washed or not. It might not be able to sense the amount of dirt or wrinkles at first, but those problems can be solved as well.
All designs go through evolution. To the extent that you can simulate evolutionary forces in a lab environment, you may be able to leapfrog your competitors and bring out a device that consumers "must have" that they haven't foreseen, but you run the risk of evolving faster than your consumers tastes or ability to understand the value of your product. Look at the evolution of portable music players from the Sony Walkman cassette player and the little Sony FM radios, now combined with portable telephones (remember bag phones?) and with Personal Digital Assistants. Now we have smart phones like the various Android phones and the iPhone. We didn't get there instantly. We got there through an evolutionary process of designs that were tested in the marketplace, where consumer consumption provided the natural selection.
Robotic laundry could go the same way, if the evolutionary pressures are present, and a little design mutation is introduced by the appliance manufacturers.
I'm not allowed to do my own laundry because my girlfriend thinks I'll screw it up and I write computer vision algorithms for a living.
But a robot that is sophisticated to do such a thing would cost at least $20k if not more as they don't exist. And then their is maintenance and other costs on top of that $20k.
For I dunno, $2k a year paid incrementally, not up front. I could hire someone to do my laundry. And that would break even at 10 years of having a robot.
People are cheaper than robots for cleaning. Cleaning is a very, very difficult task. Even much more simpler things to clean like dishes are not done well with a machine, and a human is reponsible for prewashing and treating the difficult things and then inspecting after the machine does its thing.
Last I checked all I had to do was toss my laundry in a box, pour in some powder and turn it on. When I came back a little time later it was clkean and try and I just had to take it out and fold it. Long gone are the days when I had to drag the laundry down to the river, chop wood, light a fire and boil big vats of water. Wash it by hand and then hang it on ropes to dry it.... As far as I am concerned the robots are already here when it come to laundry. (Or maybe the person who wrote this article means autonomous cyborg?)
Get some some clothes and they will figure it out.
Reminds me of the TNG episode where Data meets his mother, and she tells an embarrassing story about how she had to program a modesty routine since he refused to wear clothes.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I was thinking the same thing.
In addition, I was thinking that if you're going to use a robot to do the laundry, then it would make more sense to make a laundry system condusive the abilities of the robot. Also, I was thinking that a robot doesn't have to have human limitations such as two arms. Instead, it can have more limbs which can assist in the process.
1) Opening and closing the door.. I would imagine that this would be done by the machine, not by the robot.
2) Sorting the laundry. While it's certainly optimal if we could use specialized tags to identify the clothing, it can be tricky. Mens' clothing would be easy since sticking an RFid on a tag could be done easily enough, but women's garments which tend to be much closer to the skin can be problematic. So the robot would in fact have to be able to sort using vision. This is acceptable. If the robot were to lay the garments on a table and properly lay them out, then patterns can be recognized. In addition, choosing which mode to use should be pretty simple as the weight of the garment relative to its size should be an effective means of doing this.
3) Operating the machine... like the door, it's a matter of having a machine that the robot can speak with.
4) folding the laundry. This is difficult for one particular reason. It's because clothing is often left in an unknown state. My daughter for example has never once in her life actually put her pants in the hamper without them being inside-out. The robot would need to lay out the article and then appropriately invert the garment. I as a human have trouble at times identifying with certain garments which way is which. I'm pretty sure a routine of "Place the garments unable to be properly identified in a pile. Wait for the user to assist in teaching the robot what should be done with it next time. To be fair, this is not a robot problem, my wife and I do this with each other as well. Women's clothing can be a major problem as well. H&M for example recently sold a kind of "over dress" which is kind of like a fishnet garment. I tried folding this once.. my fingers kept getting stuck in the holes. This would kill a robot haha
5) Choosing how to fold each garment.... When in doubt, ask Sheldon Cooper. He has a nifty device which can apparently fold anything. A robot should manage quite ok with that. For hanging garments, I assume it would take effort, but it can be done.
I think the article wasn't bad. It points out the obvious problem that when operating with fabric, there is so much entropy involved that a laundry robot can be amazingly difficult to make. That said, difficult is not impossible and therefore, I would say that while it might take a massive investment to produce a robot of such intelligence, it would also be a huge step towards revolutionizing the garment production industry. So I'm sure it would be worth while to a company like Foxconn to invest heavily in such a machine.
Thank god for illegal immigrants then.
a) Dump everything in the wash
b) Wash on heavy load, warm
c) Put everything in the dryer
d) Dry on automatic
e) Put dry clothes in laundry tub
f) Done. Owner will pull clothes out of tub to wear as necessary.
Seems like you could do this with one of those Linux controller boards.
Seriously, could part of the issue be that they're trying to make the problem too hard? Most clothes are colorfast these days, so separating whites and colors is no longer necessary. You still need to wash certain items in cold water with special detergent, but if you can't tell via tactile sensation (this is soft and fluffy, wash separately) then as someone else suggested, a washable rfid should be enough to make that decision. Or, you could make the decision not to buy things like that. I have about three sweaters that need to be washed separately. I have one sweater that can be washed with jeans. I wear that one a lot.
So, for most of us, robots to do laundry would probably be a simple matter. We could afford them by getting jobs doing delicate laundry for rich people.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't see the difficulty here. Put clothes in washer. Put in soap, turn washer on. Put clothes in dryer. Turn dryer on. What... do people sort their laundry? Unnecessary.
My credentials: I buy all my clothing from Walmart.
Aye. And likewise we have a washing box robot that will clean dishes and most other items you put into it.
However, a robot of the type mentioned in the article has been made and costs about $280,000 per the article on it. It apparently can tidy rooms up too. Like dragon dictate it starts out 80% accurate and slowly improves to 98%. (which is higher than I've ever been able to get dragon dictate to be honest-the program seems unusable to me- just not accurate enough yet).
So assuming a normal moore's law like progression, I assume the price will drop by half every 18 months so 14/7/3/2/1/.5/.3 about 10 years, we'll be able to buy house cleaning (including laundry) robots for 3 grand. They'll probably suck (80% accurate) but will improve.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
before you let someone explain him. Normally he should to do so.
Who needs a robot for that? I just go to sleep in my clothes and once a week shower in them.
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
RE: In my apartment we have seven laundry rooms with two washers each. And seven drying rooms with clothes lines and 150cm fans.
That's a hell of a big apartment. I understand that Trump's primary apartment only has three laundry rooms and four drying areas. (One doubles as a squash court.)
Sounds like all your efficiency when doing the laundry is offset by all that excess space you are heating and cooling.
You'd be better off moving to a smaller apartment.
The main issue I have with this guys article is that he wants to make a laundry robot out of straw.
Automatic matching of socks would be a great incenticement (sp?) for tagging clothes.
> but women's garments which tend to be much closer to the skin can be problematic.
Idea; wristwatch-scanner, to identify if the woman next to you is wearing lingerie or grandma-pants. Gray area: Commando or untagged?
Once you CAN build a robot which can do these things then its not far off being able to do the laundry "by hand". So maybe you don't need a washing machine any more? And maybe you don't need a dishwasher, or a vacuum cleaner. In other words, if you have a robot which can do what poor old "slavey" did in middle class households in Victorian times then a lot of domestic appliances become unnecessary. And the robot doesn't need to be anything like as dexterous as a human since it has faster processing (so can compensate for mechanical inadequacies) and it can work more slowly than a human (it doesn't have better things to do than washing your underwear)
Come on all your robot engineering geniuses - build us a general purpose domestic robot!
And aim for a price equivalent to a small car and, eventually, equivalent to all those domestic appliances it replaces.