18 ms·

I think the lowest hanging fruit in robotic household automation right now is folding laundry. An interface like, put your clothes in the in-basket and this dev

by lacker 7y ago

I think the lowest hanging fruit in robotic household automation right now is folding laundry. An interface like, put your clothes in the in-basket and this device folds them. I could imagine a world where instead of washer and dryer, a nicely equipped house will have a washer, dryer, and folder. This is especially useful once you have kids. Anyway, email me if you’d be interested in building this :P

lxe 7y ago
Lowest hanging fruits are high impact and low effort. Laundry folding is probably one of the highest hanging fruits out there for robotics.
robotresearcher 7y ago
If the the lowest hanging fruit is a loosely structured hi-DOF dextrous manipulation task we gonna lose our shirts before we fold 'em. Laundry is the domestic equivalent of de-mining: the perfect robot task if it weren't for the technical and financial challenges. You have a laundry robot at home already and it does everything except folding for a reason. Here's a video of the state of the art not too long ago, using a $500K robot. Video is 50X speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo
taneq 7y ago
Folding laundry is incredibly hard. The lowest hanging fruit was dishwashers, washing machines, and automatic coffee machines. And that fruit hung low because it still offloaded all the complex spatial topological perceptual dexterous stuff to the humans.
lnsru 7y ago
I can imagine, that folding would work if you put the clothing in well defined positions. Like putting clothes on flat surface, camera identifies exact piece and decides how to fold... But then you need well working mechanical parts and it will be expensive. A good washing machine goes for 700+€ and it’s a drum, electric motor, controls and an enclosure. Would you pay 7000€ for a folder?
ragebol 7y ago
What would you pay to have such a machine in your home? A washer and a dryer are in the 500-1000 euro range, would you pay eg. 10.000 euro (or dollar for that matter) for a machine that folds laundry? The difficulty with home robotics is price vs capability. Capability is still much less than what is expect5ed via TV and movies. I think I can make a robot that sets the table up for breakfast/lunch/dinner, but just the hardware would cost the equivalent of a family car. A bit cheaper if I specialize the HW to its task only. But then it does only the table thing. Other tasks? More software, more general hardware. Sure, I can have a robot to do floor sweeping and another to make the table, but then I end up with multiple robots which share a lot of similar HW.

by lacker 7y ago

lxe 7y ago

Lowest hanging fruits are high impact and low effort. Laundry folding is probably one of the highest hanging fruits out there for robotics.

robotresearcher 7y ago

If the the lowest hanging fruit is a loosely structured hi-DOF dextrous manipulation task we gonna lose our shirts before we fold 'em. Laundry is the domestic equivalent of de-mining: the perfect robot task if it weren't for the technical and financial challenges. You have a laundry robot at home already and it does everything except folding for a reason. Here's a video of the state of the art not too long ago, using a $500K robot. Video is 50X speed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo

taneq 7y ago

Folding laundry is incredibly hard. The lowest hanging fruit was dishwashers, washing machines, and automatic coffee machines. And that fruit hung low because it still offloaded all the complex spatial topological perceptual dexterous stuff to the humans.

lnsru 7y ago

I can imagine, that folding would work if you put the clothing in well defined positions. Like putting clothes on flat surface, camera identifies exact piece and decides how to fold... But then you need well working mechanical parts and it will be expensive. A good washing machine goes for 700+€ and it’s a drum, electric motor, controls and an enclosure. Would you pay 7000€ for a folder?

ragebol 7y ago

What would you pay to have such a machine in your home? A washer and a dryer are in the 500-1000 euro range, would you pay eg. 10.000 euro (or dollar for that matter) for a machine that folds laundry? The difficulty with home robotics is price vs capability. Capability is still much less than what is expect5ed via TV and movies. I think I can make a robot that sets the table up for breakfast/lunch/dinner, but just the hardware would cost the equivalent of a family car. A bit cheaper if I specialize the HW to its task only. But then it does only the table thing. Other tasks? More software, more general hardware. Sure, I can have a robot to do floor sweeping and another to make the table, but then I end up with multiple robots which share a lot of similar HW.