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Panasonic Invests $60 Million In World's First Laundry-Folding Robot (telegraph.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Telegraph.co.uk: Panasonic has invested tens of millions of dollars in a robot that can reduce the time it takes to wash clothes by sorting clean items and folding them into neat piles. The electronics giant will pour $60 million into the startup behind the folding robot called Laundroid, which was first unveiled in October last year. The domestic robot has been a decade in the making and is expected to finally be available to buy next year. Created by Japanese company Seven Dreamers, the Laundroid can fold a shirt in ten minutes and sort clothing into types.
Seven Dreamers is yet to say how much the robot, which is around the same size as a fridge-freezer, will cost, but Panasonic is reportedly funding just 10pc of the project. Consumers place clothes in a drawer at the bottom of the Laundroid, which it then identifies, sorts and folds using a combination of image recognition software, advanced robotics and machine learning. It can fold a range of clothing items, including shirts, skirts, shorts and trousers, according to Seven Dreamers. The company plans to release the Laundroid in March 2017, and will unveil more details at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Seven Dreamers is yet to say how much the robot, which is around the same size as a fridge-freezer, will cost, but Panasonic is reportedly funding just 10pc of the project. Consumers place clothes in a drawer at the bottom of the Laundroid, which it then identifies, sorts and folds using a combination of image recognition software, advanced robotics and machine learning. It can fold a range of clothing items, including shirts, skirts, shorts and trousers, according to Seven Dreamers. The company plans to release the Laundroid in March 2017, and will unveil more details at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Does it mean a load of shirts? Haha my kids can fold a shirt in 10 minutes.. Including the time spent convincing them
My Mom will do it for half that!
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I had a business selling laundry robots but it folded :(
1. Put your shirts on hangers
2. Buy a bunch of the same kind of socks and just throw them all in a drawer
3. Pile underwear into a drawer flat
4. Only have to fold pants and shorts, and that's quick and easy
5. Way cheaper than this thing will probly be...
Am I doing it wrong if I just throw all my clean clothes in a basket and place them in my wardrobe until needed?
I shove everything into the washer, then dryer, then hang the shirts in the closet and stuff everything else into a drawer. Nothing needs folded except towels and bed linen. Are you supposed to fold underwear or socks? Nobody sees them, so why bother?
I guess selling to the wealthy, but really if you have that much money loading and unloading the thing would be beneath you anyway. And why spend money to make the hired helps lives easier ?.
I mean, I process an entire load of laundry in less than the time it takes this to fold a shirt, really ?.
who is going to take the clothes out of the dryer?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Like this!
Stupid robot!
This may make sense in a department store or other clothing stores where you can feed the clothes from the dressing room to the bot and it can fold them before being put back on shelves. But in the home? What is the carbon footprint we're adding just to not have to fold clothing?
Ultimately this AI feature would end up in a more mobile and agile home servant robot.
But I mean come on. Seriously? Are we going to offload any and all physical activity to bots? Are we all going to end up wheelchairs to save us from the horrible burden of walking? I mean I could just see a bot-chair taking us from our home and into our self-driving cars.
There is a fine line where things cross into the unnecessary, and even absurd, when it comes to technology.
Folding is easy!
I want to go stand a platform and get scanned by a 3D scanner, chose my options on a touch screen, come back in 30 minutes and have clothes that fit made by a robot. I will fold them myself, finding clothes that actually fit and don't need tailoring is far more time consuming that folding.
I've invented a robot that separates clean clothes and dirty ones and shreds them into neat piles. You can buy the licence on a piece-produced basis.
I'd be much more interested if I could throw in dirty clothes into the drawer and have it start by sorting and washing them.
10 minutes for a shirt is no big deal. I generate maybe 6 washable items a day, as do the others in my house. Until my house grows to 24 people, it will keep up.
Of all the things that I might want a robot might do, folding clothes is certainly not one of them. Better would be a robot that writes robust software, or one that invents plausible news stories.
If it folded fitted sheets, I'd buy that for a dollar.
I was a consultant for Panasonic in Japan about 20 years ago and I can tell you that after Matsushita Konosuke (the founder) died, it has been run by idiots.
I was doing a walk through at a (now bankrupt) subsidiary that was the darling of the company at the time. I asked about trading data backup between locations in western Japan, since all of their designs and corporate history was on PCs. The vice president I was with was perplexed by the question. I asked an engineer beside us at his desk about back up, and he smugly pulled a CD-R out of his desk drawer and showed it to me with a smile.
I took the CD, then the lighter on his desk and started melting it.
Anyway, I remember the spirited discussions as they said the "Internet Refrigerator" was going to be the hit product for a decade. A housewife would look in the refrigerator, them make a shopping list on the computer built into the door of the refrigerator, then keep the list on the internet because it was the internet!
I was a heretic who said it would never replace the paper, pencil and magnet. They spent GDP of small nation on that piece of crap.
That engineer is probably a top executive now...
then I reckon it can tell whether a given article of clothing is in folded condition. So, they could make a much more valuable robot - one that goes around, picks up all the clothing that isn't folded and brings it to the laundry. Next task: clothing recognition - being able to pull an article of clothing from the dryer and return it to the room from which it was originally collected.
they don't get rumbled. Don't know about the rest of the world but in America if you can afford cloths that get ironed for something other than a funeral you're doing really, really good.
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I wouldn't want to deprive my cat the simple joy of sitting on warm folded laundry. I don't get the big deal about folding; I just put some podcast on and zone out; the movements are automatic.
I enjoy folding my clothes and putting them away. Especially the ones I carefully selected and thus like very much.
It's one of those many simple household tasks that have a deep zen-like vibe to it if you put yourself it in the right mood and attempt to keep a household leaning towards minimalism. Pure bliss. And no, I'm not joking.
Same with manual dishwashing. I have a set of small wooden japanee soup bowls I use for tea, soup, cereal and everything else that requires small bowls. Washing them by hand is a pure pleasure. Something some rich dude who can afford a massive, complex, space-wasting laundry folding bot would actually pay money for to do on some relaxing zen-retreat or some non-sense the super-rich need to chill out from chasing all that money. I would cringe if anyone would put a bowl like that into a dishwasher. And I'd then probably hit him.
This bot is something straight of of that "Brasil" movie. I only see a place for something like this in a hotel or so - where massive amounts of laundry have to be folded by a certain standard. And fast. For private households this is utter non-sense and a waste of resources and a burden on the environment. If you are so freakin rich and have tons of linen for your 30-bedroom villa then get personell to do your laundry just like any other self-respecting super-rich person.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
1. the japanese are fastidious and nearly OCD about
folding clothes... don't have the link but I've
seen it...
2. there is no mention of ironing, which is generally
a longer process than folding... so you iron your
clothes, then jumble them together in the drawer and
let the robot take it from there...
3. sounds like a maintenance/replacement parts nightmare,
not to mention the size.
This is the sign of things to come.
A machine that can identify and sort clothes may have limited use by itself, but just think of what is involved in making it. Not easy at all. Tomorrows machine will be able to pick up the clothes from the kids floor, put them in the washing machine, hang them out to dry (I'm not American), and then iron them and fold them. And it will only cost $1,000. That is a machine that will sell once it can also make the bed and vacuum the floor.
Now put that machine in a hotel and what happens to the army of cleaners?
Anthony
They should spend sometime viewing youtube, I saw this being done many years ago.
So it's not like it's being kept as some big secret https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
It's one of those many simple household tasks that have a deep zen-like vibe to it if you put yourself it in the right mood
My vibe on this is that "I did this same thing just two weeks ago and I did it well. Why the hell am I forced to do the same job over and over and over?" Dishwashing falls into the same category.
I would cringe if anyone would put a bowl like that into a dishwasher. And I'd then probably hit him.
Ahh, grasshopper, if your path to true enlightenment through repetitive menial labor leads to violence, then you have taken a wrong turn somewhere near Alba-querky, Doc.
I only see a place for something like this in a hotel or so - where massive amounts of laundry have to be folded by a certain standard. And fast.
Ten minutes per shirt is not fast. And I much prefer that my shirts come back from commercial laundries on hangers instead of being folded and stuffed into a bag so they wrinkle.
"What is my purpose?"
"You fold shirts"
"Oh My God."
why spend money to make the hired helps lives easier ?
Yeah, and what's with all those washers and dryers? The staff can do that too!
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It is much faster just to overturn your laundry basket somewhere near the heap of allegedly "clean" clothes & towels.
Yeah, its a break from being in front of the screen and sitting down. I fold two loads of laundry for my wife and I in about 20 minutes, besides the excersize it gets me semi outside (apartment laundry I fold them from/on the machines), also during the process I get a good look on which items need to be tossed or mended. Same here for dishes, its a just before bed task, kinda the last (easy) accomplishment of the evening as well as knowing I have stuff clean in the morning.
I wonder how well folding robot maintenance tech jobs will pay...
Folding fitted sheets.
(posting as AC to preserve moderation)
First, I note that every folding machine I have ever seen only ever seems to focus on one item. There;s a machine to fold shirts, a machine to fold pants and so on. (I've been in a few very large scale laundry facilities and watch automation videos on youtube all the time)
This machine, and the much cheaper Foldimate promise to fold a large subset of the household laundry. The Laundroid holds the promise of being able to literally dump a basket of laundry in it at night and have it all neatly folded by morning. Problem is, for myself and I believe many households, laundry is done in batches larger than one load.
The Foldimate, on the other hand, will only fold things that can be clipped up on the little clips. (much like a pants or skirt hanger) BUT, it appears to fold an item within 30 seconds, meaning it could conceivably fold and output items pretty close to the speed I could pull them out of the basket and clip them up. It offers the ability to steam and/or scent the folded item on its way out, but I don't care about that part. It's not even at the pre-order stage, but it is closer to market release than the Laundroid and is slated to price out between 700 and 850U$, with a discount for people willing to put down a deposit.
For my household, the Foldimate is the clear choice. On a Saturday, when we are doing many loads of laundry, the Foldimate will keep up with the output of the dryer. (Drying always takes longer than washing, that is the current choke point, so much so that I have sometimes wished we had room for a second dryer) It will fold all the shirts, pants and towels while I deal with the socks, underwear and so on. Also, I suspect that the 700-850 US price point is going to make it attractive to a MUCH larger demographic than the Laundroid. The Laundroid has no official pricing yet, and not even much speculation beyond "several thousands". Having seen videos of laundry sorting and folding research machines online, I have the general idea of what the Laundroid is probably doing inside that glossy Fridge form factor. There is likely one or two delta style robotic arms, along with at least two, possibly three high resolution cameras, last years version of a four core processor and a fair bit of RAM. My estimate of the BOM is roughly 2 grand U$, so I'm WAG a retail price of 5 grand and up. So buyers can get a machine that handles between half and 3/4 of their laundry folding needs for under a grand, or get a more capable machine that costs as much as a used car. (note, the Foldimate, and presumably the Laundroid can do pillow cases, but not sheets. All the videos I have seen for either machine though feature only t-shirts in long and short sleeves, arguably the easiest garment to fold.)
As long as it wouldn't nag me to death and get fat, I'm all for it.
Surly someone will have trademarked "lawn mower".
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Did anyone noticed the line in the laundroid site
"The data from loT network will be transferred to seven dreamers original server, to provide the better customer service."
Where have I heard this before?
I enjoy hand-washing my clothes and putting them away. Especially the ones I carefully selected and thus like very much.
It's one of those many simple household tasks that have a deep zen-like vibe to it if you put yourself it in the right mood and attempt to keep a household leaning towards minimalism. Pure bliss. And no, I'm not joking.
Household chores, such as washing clothes, hanging them to dry, washing dishes, going daily to the store because of lack of refrigeration, and managing a fire for dinner took up significant chunks of the day. The low-hanging fruit is gone so they're working on the smaller tasks now (roomba and laundry folding robot). If they can make them cheap enough, they could become ubiquitous and hit a home run.
If you want to speed up your kids, unplug the router until all the laundry is folded.
I've seen several parents just change the wifi password and let them know what chores will be required of them to learn the new one.
I have to take the clothes out of the laundry machine and put them into the sorting/folding robot? Shouldn't I just put dirty clothes into the laundry machine and receive sorted/folded clean clothes as the output? Shouldn't I be able to throw a pair of socks into the laundry machine and have it clean it efficiently and hand me back a pair of clean socks a few minutes later? Why do I need to throw a big pile of stuff into a laundry machine?
The need to conserve water, detergent, power etc., forces me to own a lot of clothing so I have something to wear while my dirty laundry piles up until I have a full wash load. If the machine could launder clothes as they are fed in, I would only need two sets of clothes- one to wear and one to process through the laundry. I might even drop to one set of clothing and pajamas if I could launder every night. Such a machine could create a huge change in the way people view clothing ownership/shopping.
There's no need to sort clothes if all you're washing is underwear(1), socks(2), shirt(1), and pants(1).
Well, I pay my cleaner £16/week but I bought a £300 Dyson for her to use.
Without the Dyson I suspect the same level of care and attention to my carpets would cost me £200/week from her and still not get results quite as good.
I could pay her to do the laundry too (and did when my washing machine broke) but it's cheaper to buy a washing machine and do my own. Adding the automatic folder would be needed to really match the service she provides but it'd need to cost around £600 and last for less than four years before she became a cheaper option.
Home automation, it's wonderful.
Same thoughts here - just take a moment and enjoy it at home, but... I used to work for a company that made apparel. There is a plant in the deep south with washing machines the size of dumpsters - they wash 288 jeans at a time. Over 10,000 pieces are washed, dried, pressed, and folded a day. People stand there and manually turn them wrong-side-out and then, after laundry, turn them back again. They have to check the pockets to make sure there isn't any pumice left in them from "Stone Washing" - the rocks will mess up an iron. Extremely low-tech, labor intensive. Most of it is done in Mexico, except during droughts when it's hard to get enough water there (I'm not making this up), so they keep the operation in Alabama running all the time and they just add a couple of shifts during dry weather. A jeans-folding robot would need to come in pretty cheap so its Net Present Value would be less than minimum wage. Wild guess, maybe around $10K would be the breakeven point.
Come to think of it, with Alabama in record drought right now, I wonder if that laundry is running? :-)