Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry

Posted by timothy on from the apparently-I-can't-do-it-either dept.

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."

7 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. Marriage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I married mine. She does the work quite well, hardly malfunctions but requires the occasional of hardware upgrade.

  2. These Clothes are Yelling At Me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

  3. Re:Clearly a non-coder by OrangeTide · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, all robots are naively programmed. If you stand in front of a washbot while it is running, it will grab you by the trousers and stuff laundry into your ribcage.

    --
    “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  4. sexbot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  5. But muh singularity!! by gizmo2199 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.
  6. I am sure it would be easier than ... by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Funny

    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
  7. Wrong approach by EmperorOfCanada · · Score: 3, Funny
    This whole attempt at automation is trying to replicate a system designed for humans. But other options could make things easier for robots.
    • For instance putting something like an RFID tag on clothing so that the robot doesn't have to do a complicated visual assessment of the clothing.
    • Most washing machines are also very much designed for humans. But a washing machine that was altered for robotic use would be far better.
    • For instance a machine that dumped the clothing out when it was done would be better than a machine where a machine has to reach in and pluck stuff out;
    • as would a unified washer/dryer.
    • Also the set up of a typical laundry room would be again poor. So to have the machine dump the clothing out onto a rimmed metal surface where the robot could pick things out (remember the rfid tags).
    • And folding the clothing would be more based on the clothing itself. The manufacturer could identify the optimal folding pattern (from the rfid tag) that the robot would use.
    • Then there are steps like ironing where again a robot wielding a traditional iron would be stupid. But one of those roller press things would be great.

    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.