7 ms·
There's a lot of truth in this. I sometimes joke that robot benchmarks should focus on common household chores. Given a basket of mixed laundry, sort and fold e
by ubj 2y ago
There's a lot of truth in this. I sometimes joke that robot benchmarks should focus on common household chores. Given a basket of mixed laundry, sort and fold everything into organized piles. Load a dishwasher given a sink and counters overflowing with dishes piled up haphazardly. Clean a bedroom that kids have trashed. We do these tasks almost without thinking, but the unstructured nature presents challenges for robots.
- Balgair 2y agoI maintain that whoever invents a robust laundry folding robot will be a trillionaire. In that, I dump jumbled clean clothes straight from a dryer at it and out comes folded and sorted clothes (and those loner socks). I know we're getting close, but I also know we're not there yet.
- sss111 2y agoHonestly, a robot that can hang jumbled clean clothes instead of folding them would be good enough, it's crazy how we don't even have those.
- oblio 2y agoLaundry folding and laundry ironing, I would say.
- musicale 2y agoHopefully will detect whether a small child is inside or not.
- imafish 2y ago> I maintain that whoever invents a robust laundry folding robot will be a trillionaire … so Elon Musk? :D
- jessekv 2y agoI want it to lay out an outfit every day too. Hopefully without hallucination.
- stefs 2y agoit's not hallucination, it's high fashion
- tanseydavid 2y agoYes, but the stupid robot laid out your Thursday-black-Turtleneck for you on Saturday morning. That just won't suffice.
- yongjik 2y agoI can live without folding laundry (I can just shove my undershirts in the closet, who cares if it's not folded), but whoever manufactures a reliable auto-loading dishwasher will have my dollars. Like, just put all your dishes in the sink and let the machine handle them.
- Brybry 2y agoBut if your dishwasher is empty is takes nearly the same amount of time/effort to put dishes straight into the dishwasher that it does to put them in the sink. I think I'd only really save time by having a robot that could unload my dishwasher and put up the clean dishes.
- namibj 2y agoThat's called a second dishwasher: one is for taking out, the other for putting in. When the latter is full, turn it on, dirty dishes wait outside until the cycle finishes, when the dishwashers switch roles.
- ptsneves 2y agoI thought about this and it gets even better. You do not really need shelves as you just use the clean dishwasher as the storage place. I honestly don’t know why this is not a thing in big or wealthy homes.
- jannyfer 2y agoAnother thing that bothers me is that dishwashers are low. As I get older, I’m finding it really annoying to bend down. So get me a counter-level dishwasher cabinet and I’ll be happy!
- oangemangut 2y agoWe have a double drawer dishwasher and it hurts my brain watching friends plan around their nightly wash.
- 2y ago
- nradov 2y agoThere is the Foldimate robot. I don't know how well it works. It doesn't seem to pair up socks. (Deleted the web link, it might not be legitimate.)
- smokel 2y agoBeware, this website is probably a scam. Foldimate has gone bankrupt in 2021 [1], and the domain referral from foldimate.com to a 404 page at miele.com, suggests that it was Miele who bought up the remains, not a sketchy company with a ".website" top-level domain. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoldiMate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoldiMate
- smokel 2y agoWe are certainly getting close! In 2010, watching PR2 fold some unseen towels is similar to watching paint dry [1], but we can now enjoy robots attain lazy student-level laundry folding in real-time, as demonstrated by π₀[2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo [2] https://www.physicalintelligence.company/blog/pi0 https://www.physicalintelligence.company/blog/pi0
- dweekly 2y agoI was a believer in Gal's FoldiMate but sadly it...folded. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoldiMate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FoldiMate
- blargey 2y agoAt this point I'm not sure we'll actually get a task-specific machine for laundry folding/sorting before humanoid robots gain the capability to do it well enough.
- zamalek 2y agoSlightly tangential, we already have amazing laundry robots. They are called washing and drying machines. We don't give these marvels enough credit, mostly because they aren't shaped like humans. Humanoid robots are mostly a waste of time. Task-shaped robots are much easier to design, build, and maintain... and are more reliable. Some of the things you mention might needs humanoid versatility (loading the dishwasher), others would be far better served by purpose-built robots (laundry sorting).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jkaptur 2y agoI'm embarrassed to say that I spent a few moments daydreaming about a robot that could wash my dishes. Then I thought about what to call it...
- musicale 2y agoSadly current "dishwasher" models are neither self-loading nor unloading. (Seems like they should be able to take a tray of dishes, sort them, load them, and stack them after cleaning.) Maybe "busbot" or "scullerybot".
- vidarh 2y agoThe problem is more doing it in sufficiently little space, and using little enough water and energy. Doing one that you just feed dishes individually and that immediate wash them and feed them to storage should be entirely viable, but it'd be wasteful, and it'd compete with people having multiple small drawer-style dishwashers, offering relatively little convenience over that. It seems most people aren't willing to pay for multiple dishwashers - even multiple small ones or set aside enough space, and that places severe constraints on trying to do better.
- wsintra2022 2y agoWas it a dishwasher? Just give it all your unclean dishes and tell it to go, come back an hour later and they all washed and mostly dried!