Laundroid the laundry-folding robot will take your (least-favourite) job
Lauren O'Neil | CBC News | Posted: October 9, 2015 1:41 AM | Last Updated: October 9, 2015
Finally, a reason to be excited about the rise of the machines
Prophets of techno-doom, get ready to change your machine-hating tunes.
Robots may one day take our jobs, our partners, and even our lives, but it looks like they'll be giving us something very precious in return: The gift of never having to fold laundry again.
A group of Japanese tech companies and unveiled their forthcoming "Laundroid" machine this week at the 2015 Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC) trade show in Japan.
In development by Panasonic, Daiwa House, and Seven Dreamers since 2008, this large, full-service laundry robot can reportedly wash, dry, sort and then fold your clothes perfectly based on what its AI determines each garment to be.
"With a hypothetical bundle of clothes, each item demands different folding (we're going to say) techniques, so the machine needs to figure what that soft lump of cloth is, then prime it for folding," wrote Engadget's Mat Smith after seeing the Laundroid presentation at CEATEC.
"Because clothing is so malleable, it takes a higher degree of skill and dexterity for a robot to perform tasks with than, say, wood or metal," he continued. "However, as far as the on-the-rails demonstration on stage went, it was a success."
Indeed, video footage from the presentation suggests that a clean, folded shirt can be yours just five minutes after tossing a dirty one into the machine.
While five minutes per garment is certainly longer than it would take to just fold the darned clothes yourself, a full load put in at bedtime would be ready by the time you woke up seven hours later according to the presentation's hostess.
And it could do much more than that one day, according to its creators.
CNET reports that Laundroid was designed to be built into the project's "closet of the future" — a high-tech robotic clothing system that would not only wash, dry, sort, and fold your garments, but actually put them away for you too.
"The company has a roadmap stretching to 2020, in which it envisions a system fully integrated with your home," writes Tim Stevens of the CEATEC presentation. "You would dump dirty laundry into any of a number of chutes and, eventually, those clothes would magically reappear in the appropriate closet."
Many on Twitter clearly enjoy the idea of having this particular robot at home.
Sadly for them, and maybe for you, Laundroid won't be folding any human wardrobes just yet.
A press release from Panasonic states that it aims to launch pre-orders for the laundry-folding bot sometime in 2016, but Seven Dreamers reportedly indicated that consumer retail units likely won't be available until at least 2019 and that even then, they'll probably cost "about as much as a small car."