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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...
Yes, your clothes are getting all rumpled from cooling down in a heap in the basket. Much like an iron heats a shirt and once wrinkles are pressed out of it the shirt stays unwrinkled because it is allowed to cool while smooth.
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.
Substitute "tailor" for "robot" and there's an entire district of Hong Kong where you can get this done.
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...
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
How do they get into the washing machine in the first place (with the correct cycle) and then into the dryer (at the correct temperature) in the first place?
My Mom has been asking me that same question for the past 25 years, but I still haven't figured out the answer. As far as I am concerned, it is magic. I leave my clothes on the bathroom floor, and the next evening they have appeared in my bedroom drawer, all without me needing to leave the basement.