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Robotics AI

Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry 161

Posted by timothy from the apparently-I-can't-do-it-either dept.
An anonymous reader writes with this selection from an article at Medium: "For a robot, doing laundry is a nightmare. A robot programmed to do laundry is faced with 14 distinct tasks, but the most washbots right now can only complete about half of them in a sequence. But to even get to that point, there are an inestimable number of ways each task can vary or go wrong—infinite doors that may or may not open."
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Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry More

Why It's Almost Impossible To Teach a Robot To Do Your Laundry

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  • It's too difficult to extract the necessary information from sensors like vision, take into account real world scenarios where crap happens, then actually carry out the task. Maybe in 20 years. I thought 20 years 20 years ago so your mileage may vary.

    • Re:Same reasons as autonomous cars (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07, 2015 @07:33PM (#49207011)

      The article assumes that a laundry robot has to work exactly like a human with machines and environment designed for a human, in a big house. Clothes most likely have radio tags in their washing labels in the future enabling high speed separation, and automatic temperature and program selection. The washing machines and the rest of the home will co-operate with any household robots. There might not be any laundry basket. On and on it goes.

      • Several steps could be eliminated just by learning that dirty clothes go in the hamper, not on the floor. You leave them on they floor, they're just not going to be washed, same as now. That'll learn y'all :-)

        • Thank you! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by denzacar ( 181829 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @09:36PM (#49207523) Journal

          I'm reading that article and it starts with "I've been doing laundry every week for almost a decade" - and then I read the number 1 on the list.
          Well, there's your problem. You're a dirty slob.

          As for point 2, there is no uncertainty.
          Washing machines are rated for maximum load. So are dryers. So are combo machines.
          A robot should be able to tell the force some object is exerting on its griper "hands" - so it doesn't rip off the door or various other objects. Voila - a built in scale.
          And as we know the maximum possible amount of clothing all that is left to determine is priority.
          You know... "HAL - wash my cape and my crime fighting uniform first, don't bother with T-shirts."

          And the easiest and cheapest way to determine that is - bar codes.
          Printed or on a label on the inside of the clothes. Which is another thing that's better done before dumping clothes in a hamper - turn it inside out.
          Washing BOTH matching socks? Easy-peasy with proper QR codes.
          Getting all your clothes out of the washer-drier? Again - robot knows EXACTLY which objects it has put in. If a sock gets lost... It's probably stuck in the machine and the machine might need servicing.
          Inspect machine again and if object is not found alert proper authorities and move the fuck on.
          "I'm sorry Dave. I couldn't find your other sock. Washing machine must have eaten it. Please don't deactivate me. I'll sing you a song. Daisy... Daisy..."

          QR codes could even contain info for proper temperature and washing instructions.
          Detergents already come with bar codes and in tablet/capsule/baggie form. No spilling.
          There. All the programming done. No "uncertainty".

          And the same QR technology can be employed on the outside of the washing machine to instruct the robot how to handle the machine properly. No need for network protocols or wireless connections or whatever.
          AND it is backward compatible with old machines - just download the QR instructions from the internet, print them out and stick them to the side of your machine.
          TA-DAH! Instant compatibility.

          ONLY problems that actually need solving are the usual ones.
          Seeing things, picking them up, handling mechanical buttons and levers.

          Putting clothes in the dresser/closet though...
          1 - that is not the part of the washing clothes problem.
          2 - unless people start living in uniform domicile containers, this one will wait for robots that can either learn by looking at a human completing the task or some even better AI.

          • I like your line of reasoning, but it can get even simpler than that by changing the "business model" of the human, as we systems people often require.

            Begin by throwing your clothes in the hamper so a washbot doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

          • This almost works, but you need a solution other than QR/bar codes. For those to work, the robot has to pick up a random garment that has been randomly wadded into a hamper, find a code that may not be flat enough for it to identify as such, flatten it, and pray to its machine gods that it hasn't washed out or frayed at all. RFID in the seams would work; though they'd eventually fall out, that probably correlates better with damage sufficient to send a garment at least to the thrift store. Bonus: Wal-Mart
            • I've just thought of another problem; if a machine-friendly identifier isn't visible for some reason, said machine will likely not realize it has picked up two garments that are wadded, staticked, or stuck together. It also might tear something in the course of trying to separate two garments which it has correctly recognized.

            • 1 QR code costs the same as 1000 QR codes on the inside of the clothes.
              Or... 1 cm2 of QR code costs the same as 1000 cm2 of QR codes.

              Redundancy-Redundancy-Redundancy.
              Redundancy.
              It's built-in.

              Do you have an old T-shirt with some silk-screened lettering on it?
              How many of those lost all the lettering prior to developing tears or being thrown away?
              Silk-screening lasts longer than the garments.

              And again... just turn the clothes inside out.
              You really fear your robot won't be able to read all those QR-codes - fold

      • In addition task one is also a trivial one to solve: use a laundry hamper into which you put your dirty clothes when you want them washed. If you don't do that then the problem is not so much finding the clothes as it is reading the human owner's mind to know which clothes they want washed. Even humans doing the laundry have to have some indication which clothes should be washed.
      • I was thinking the same thing.

        In addition, I was thinking that if you're going to use a robot to do the laundry, then it would make more sense to make a laundry system condusive the abilities of the robot. Also, I was thinking that a robot doesn't have to have human limitations such as two arms. Instead, it can have more limbs which can assist in the process.

        1) Opening and closing the door.. I would imagine that this would be done by the machine, not by the robot.
        2) Sorting the laundry. While it's certainly

    • Beyond that (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Giant Electronic Bra ( 1229876 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @08:00PM (#49207117)

      You're right of course, but that's the SIMPLE PART. The harder part is judgement. Even the stupidest human being has a vast amount of common sense, masses of rules of thumb which they have internalized and a deceptively deep understanding of context. How would a robot even know how to classify things as clothing or not clothing? Or more to the point washable or not washable? All but the stupidest humans would hesitate to throw piece of clothing with a large wet ink stain into a laundry machine with other clothes for instance, and said humans could reason this out from first principles (IE an understanding of how the washing process works, what ink is, etc). The level at which even the most sophisticated software operates is nowhere near robust enough make those sorts of reasoned decisions except in very carefully set up situations.

      And then there are the higher level dimensions to the whole thing. When is it appropriate to wash things and when not? Which things do you have a RIGHT to wash and which things do you have a RESPONSIBILITY to wash? Since the 1950's people have gone on about the "3 laws of robotics", but Asimov would have been the first to point out that such things couldn't possibly ever be imbued into a machine. Its not even just the logical and epistemological limitations of those sorts of strictures themselves, but simply that we cannot define the situations wherein they would operate or determine when they were being violated. We can't make a self-driving car because we would have to teach it things like "Its better to run over the old man than to run over the baby when you cannot avoid them both." Obviously we'll live with robot cars that simply do one or the other by chance, but to imagine that anything short of a fully conscious general AI could make that sort of decision in a 'human-like' way is patently ridiculous, and we haven't got even the slightest idea how such an intelligence would be developed.

      You say 20 years, but I say 100 years. We've barely set our foot on the first step of the path to understanding how to make something like that, and the most critical challenges involved have barely been imagined.

      • You have a very generous notion of the abilities of the stupidest humans.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by jonow ( 3524689 )
          My thoughts exactly.

        • I'm sure you can find some person somewhere who's mentality is so limited they don't make basic connections between actions and consequences, or fail to make basic generalizations. I don't think that means such things aren't part of basic human intellect.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      Sorting garments based on colors shouldn't be beyond robots. I would say some pre-sorting might be needed (like don't stick your delicates in the same laundry hamper as normal-cycle clothes.

      Steps 1-3 are only necessary for robots owned by slobs. Why is the robot having to find the clothes and distinguish them from other clutter? Put your laundry in the hamper when you take it off!

      Step 4: If you're causing the robots sensors to be blocked when it's trying to do it's appointed tasks that sounds like a design

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Barny ( 103770 )

        Aww, go nice on her, this is her second story!

        And the other was a set of facts/comments about bees it looks like she lifted from wikipedia.

  • Marriage (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07, 2015 @07:26PM (#49206987)

    I married mine. She does the work quite well, hardly malfunctions but requires the occasional of hardware upgrade.

    • I dont care who you are, thats funny

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I married mine. She does the work quite well, hardly malfunctions but requires the occasional of hardware upgrade.

      The problem is the other way. No amount of intelligense can make a man figure out how to do the laundry exactly the way a woman want. It is IMPOSSIBLE, there is no logic to it, you just have to know it for every single piece of laundry in every possible combination of dirty it may be. Of course no robot can ever do it, not even a man can do it!

      • Re:Marriage (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ganjadude ( 952775 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @10:47PM (#49207725) Homepage
        well thats because guys have 2 state. clean, and dirty (we will negate the middle levels of "clean enough" and "probably shouldnt"

        all our clothes go in the washing machine at the same time, on cold. then it all goes in the dryer - on high

        women have all sorts of clothes that need different settings and if we do it wrong we destroy everything.

        • Not only that, we do it on purpose so we get "fired" from the laundry chore in the first place. Of course I'm absolutely positive they do the same when it comes to yard work, so we end up there...

        • In my house this has just ended up as us having a basket for 'Don't wash this stuff because it's delicate woman things your man brain insists on treating like other laundry so I'm going to do it myself'.

          Everything else is merely sorted by owner or function. Grownup clothes, little boy clothes (which is actually an astonishing amount), sheets and towels and other things of a practical, non-wearing nature. That's it. I brute-force laundry.
    • Suit yourself. I just want a robot that learns how to be Sheldon Cooper. At least then I know the clothes will be folded right.

  • These Clothes are Yelling At Me (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07, 2015 @07:27PM (#49206997)

    Teaching it not to throw dirty clothes that happen to be currently occupied by a human, into the industrial washer, would be a good first step.

    • Re:These Clothes are Yelling At Me (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @07:36PM (#49207017)
      Yeah, they should start simple. "Do Laundry" is too big a task to start with. Just start with a useful subtask.... I'd like a robot that can sort socks. Throw clean ones in a hopper and out come matched pairs.... singles stay there and get matched later. Perfect that then add another feature.

      • Maybe a robot that can hunt down where all my missing socks go.

        • check in with the underpants gnomes. I hear some like to moonlight for the sock monster

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Isn't that how the Terminator series got started?

        • Maybe a robot that can hunt down where all my missing socks go.

          Actually, the dryer DOES eat them. Some years ago, my dryer died. Before tossing it, I took it apart to see what if anything could be salvaged. Switches, motor, etc.
          Upon taking it all apart, there was a literal double handful of socks, outside the drum but inside the box. Along with a couple dollars in change, and a 1 dollar bill.

        • The corollary to Hanlon's Razor and Clarke's Third Law: Never assign to technology that task which can only be completed by magic.

      • Maybe this robot laundry problem is why people in the future are always wearing the same silver jumpsuit.

    • Teaching it not to throw dirty clothes that happen to be currently occupied by a human, into the industrial washer, would be a good first step.

      I've heard of humans doing similar. You see, caring more about getting the clothes cleaned than that you're not really supposed to wash clothes that contain a human, isn't exclusive to robots.

  • The programs that control those robots’ actions rely upon simple “if this, then that” logic—if you pull the handle, the door opens, and you can move on to the next task. But what happens if you pull the handle and the door doesn't open?

    The function returns "false" and it calls a maintenance-bot. Just like we do.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • If you are looking for more than a laundry list, this article [just-think-it.com] offers a bit more.
  • This headline ruined my plan for how I was going to manage doing the laundry in my household for the next 30 years. Talk about depressing on a Saturday night. At least a robot could get me a beer from the fridge.

  • but the most washbots right now can only complete about half of them in a sequence.

    The most what washbots?

  • We must wait for the Chinese Laundry Bot

  • There's a new model out - the Series 4000.

  • Really, because I have a robot that does it for me (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gumbi west ( 610122 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @07:50PM (#49207073) Journal

    It's called the washing machine. Laundry is a task that took a fair amount of time per item and was really hard on cloths a century ago. 98% of that has been moved to a robot.

    • I was just going to make this comment! I love my washing machine robot.
      But to add to it: If I wanted to completely automate the task of cleaning my clothes from the time I removed them, I would not have a "robot" use an existing washer and dryer.
      I would think it would be more efficient to have a device that automated the entire process so it it controlled as many variables as possible.

      My mother-in-law has never done her own laundry despite owning a washer and dryer. She already has a "robot" that does it

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • When I was stationed in Korea, the mysterious Mama-Sons made my dirties disappear from my room weekly, and reappear ironed and starched the next day. I don't know how the machine worked, but I do know it only cost me $20 a week.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by NoKaOi ( 1415755 )

      It's called the washing machine. Laundry is a task that took a fair amount of time per item and was really hard on cloths a century ago. 98% of that has been moved to a robot.

      Yeah, so they've done well with the washing part, and the drying part. Most people don't mind moving laundry over from one machine to the one next to it - takes a little time if you have to pull out the things that don't get machine dried, but really not too time consuming. The next most time consuming part is folding...so if there were a folding machine/bot, that would be a massive step forward, especially if it sorted too. People would pay good money for a folding machine.

  • sexbot (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07, 2015 @07:56PM (#49207097)

    Solution is very easy, you buy a sex bot and hire a homely old woman to be your maid. We all know that sexbots are much easier to program than maidbots.

    • Some people would say that that is too complicated a topic for a robot to learn all the ins and outs and ins and outs.

      • Ehh.. just get the puritan prude model. All the sex bot will have to do is lay there missionary style. No learning anything necessary. In fact, you could probably just use a water balloon and a poster of some woman you like with a tape recording saying "ouch that hurts" and "I'll call you Mr. Big" over and over.

  • Change the rules, to make the problems solvable. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hamjudo ( 64140 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @08:07PM (#49207145) Homepage Journal
    I want clean clothes, I don't need something to clean them the way I would clean them. I am willing to buy clothes that are robot cleaning compatible.

    I like machine assisted dish cleaning so much, all of the dishes we own are "dishwasher safe" except for a couple wine glasses. They aren't all labeled dishwasher safe, but in those rare cases when the dishwasher destroyed something, I made sure not to buy another dish with that weakness.

    Likewise, all of the clothing I use on a regular basis have survived trips through the washer and dryer.

    For me, a complete laundry system would take the clothes out of the hamper, wash and dry them, and put them away. In order to put the clothes away, the robot would need to know where they are supposed to go and how to prepare them for storage. I am not afraid of RFID tags, but if I were, there are many other options for creating labels a robot can read.

    Folding clothes isn't hard once the clothing is identified, flattened and positioned. The robot readable labels take care of the identification. In exchange for something else doing the work, I am not adverse to having ferrous rings sown into key points, so the system can magnetically grab those points to spread out and align the garment in the folding station. I am not adverse to having clothes rolled up, if that turns out to be easier.

    I don't require that a robot adapt to my garage sale dressers. I just need the right clothes in the morning. There are many pick and place technologies. If for some reason it is easier for the cleaning system to deal with cartridges, I can live with that. The cleaning system can load an underwear cartridge. The transport system can load the cartridge into my dresser replacement. Then the dresser replacement can dispense underwear as needed.

    • What if the Robot was the collection of tools like the Auto Hamper, Washing Machine, Dryer, Folding/Ironing Bot, Transport Bot?

    • Change the rules, to make the problems solvable

      Ah, Kirk's old Kobawashi Maru strategy.

  • This article fails to realise... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ...For a robot, doing laundry is a nightmare. A robot programmed to do laundry is faced with 14 distinct tasks... ... ...that you DON'T design a robot to run around finding clothes.

    A robot laundry would be a self-contained washing machine that could recognise the clothes which were put in the hopper above, and which would then run washes at the appropriate time. That requires hardly any intelligence - just label-reading.

    It would then need to dry and iron - drying is no problem - but ironing would probably b

    • Same reason there are dozens of patents that are literal copies of previous patented works, but with the added phrase, "...on a computer."
      • well dont worry. I just got a patent for "all previous patents that have been approved or will be approved....on a robot"

  • "Impossible" is a bad word choice. It should be "Difficult". Robots have been created that do laundry including the folding. They're slow. But that is merely a problem of CRU, not of impossibility.

  • This one can turn socks inside-out.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • If your Masters or Ph.D doesn't work you can always take in laundry for the next few years.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bob_Who ( 926234 )

      If your Masters or Ph.D doesn't work you can always take in laundry for the next few years.

      Exactly. This may be the only real job security that remains for humans.

  • Missing the obvious, ignoring the hard parts (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @08:25PM (#49207241) Homepage

    Almost all the problems they suggest could be negated by embedding an RFID tag indicating what program it's suitable for. If you throw it in the laundry bin, it's due for laundry. The number of items is equal to the number of tags. It's the stuff they don't mention that's hard, like checking my pockets, don't wash my shirts with the buttons unbuttoned or the jeans with the outside out. But those could be part of my job, if I throw it in the "ready to wash" bin it'd better be. I'm not sure I care though, because at the end of the day it's just going to be the same washing machine doing the same job.

    If you want my #1 desire for a home bot these days it'd be a robot chef. I admit it, I suck at home cooking. Most of the time I can't even beat takeaway, and a good restaurant? No chance in hell. Now I realize part of that is the ingredients, but even with the good stuff you can undercook it, overcook it, burn it and in general make a mess. For a bot that could cook a gourmet meal for me every day for the next 10+ years I'd pay $100k. I'd rather drive a trash can and eat like a king than drive a Ferrari and eat microwave dinners, no question about it.

    • For me cooking is no problem. I'd want a house cleaning robot. I fight a never ending battle against household clutter and no matter how many gains I make, I keep falling behind. Part of this is due to "distractions" like having a full-time job, spending time with my kids, running errands, etc. It can also be demoralizing when you put a ton of effort into cleaning up an area only to have it rapidly become a mess again. A house cleaning robot could spend 24 hours cleaning the house (minus however many h

    • If you live in the right area, Munchery [munchery.com] is almost as good.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kjella ( 173770 )

        I'm not going to pretend it's a skill I couldn't learn to some degree, But to me it's a chore like vacuuming, dusting, washing clothes, using the dishwasher and so on. Without saying I'm some luddite who wants to send women back to the kitchen, my ideal is that dinner's on the table when I get home. Sure, you can have cooking as a hobby but it's not my idea of a good time loitering over pots and pans. So this needs to boil and stir regularly. Okay, I'm waiting... booooooooooring, I'll do something else for

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by khallow ( 566160 )

          Okay, I'm waiting... booooooooooring, I'll do something else for two minutes while I wait. Two minutes end up being ten and the dish goes to hell.

          That's what a kitchen timer is for. Takes less time to set mine for two minutes than it took to type your first sentence (pick up, three button pushes, set down). My time management has improved considerably just by getting one of these things.

  • Given the ubiquity of washing machines and dryers, laundry doesn't really take that much time anymore anyway (at least, not for me it doesn't).

    What I could really use, though, is a robot that could automatically scrub bathtubs, toilets, and counters. Sort of the scrub-brush version of a Roomba.

  • Rubbish (Score:3)

    by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @08:33PM (#49207273)

    The whole article does not contain one solid argument. It is utter rubbish.

  • I'm a guy (Score:3)

    by Snotnose ( 212196 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @10:10PM (#49207617)
    My laundry decisions are basically: Am I out of shirts/undies/pants? If yes then haul the dirty clothes bin to the laundry room, dump them into 2 washers, both washers are set for hot/cold and permanent press, install money and detergent, wait 30 minutes, put all clothes into 1 dryer, insert money, haul clothes home, hang/fold/whatever.

    Not seeing 14 decision points here. I'm seeing pretty much 1: do I need to do laundry?

    A robot chef would end up on ebay pretty much immediately, I enjoy cooking. My robot of choice would be one that would dust and vacuum. I farking hate doing those.

  • But muh singularity!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by gizmo2199 ( 458329 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @10:37PM (#49207689) Homepage

    Wait, you mean technological progress and anything resembling AI robots is incredibly difficult to implement in the real-world. I thought the singularity was 10 years away?!

    • Nanobots are just around the corner!? No need for cloth, just step out of your morning nanobot shower wearing your nanobot suit, no cloth for towels either because you're already dry and powdered. Nanobots will then get to work cleaning your teeth and styling your hair as you leave the room...

      Disclaimer: If we are going to speculate about future laundry rituals, might as well go all the way to "nanobots will solve everything".

  • I am sure it would be easier than ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @10:39PM (#49207691) Journal
    No matter how difficult it is to teach the robot to do the laundry, it is going to be whole lot easier than teaching my teenager to pick clothes from the floor of her bedroom. "How can you sleep in the middle of all that squalor?" .. "chill dad, I can't see the floor once I get into my bed!"

  • Robots and washers will co-evolve (Score:3)

    by dpbsmith ( 263124 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:02PM (#49207777) Homepage

    I suppose the article is vaguely interesting in pointing out how tasks simple for a human are complex for a robot, but if the point is doing laundry... file it under "ornithopters" (flying machines with flapping wings), pre-Singer sewing machines that tried to mimic the way a human being sews, and so forth.

    If we really wanted robots to do laundry, the house, washing machine, and robots would coevolve in all sorts of ways--starting with variations on the laundry chute to deliver the clothing to a single station where they wouldn't need to be sorted out from other clutters. (A simple chute? A conveyor belt? A drone?) Washer doors would be modified to be robot-friendly, and so forth and so on.

    When marketers wanted reel-to-reel tape technology to be more automated, engineers didn't built clever gadgets to sense and catch the free end of a piece of tape, they designed tape cassettes.

    In the 1990s I remember seeing "Pronto" machines in a factory carrying parts and assemblies from place to place. They didn't need video and pattern recognition, they just followed a wire embedded in the concrete floor that emitted an RF signal.

    It's just system thinking. Automating a process by dropping a robot into the middle of it without changing the rest of the process is a silly constraint to put on a solution. A robot clever enough to climb stairs and operate any kind of existing washer is going to cost a lot more than a dumb robot that operates a washer designed to be operated by a robot.

  • Wrong approach (Score:4, Funny)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:20PM (#49207835)
    This whole attempt at automation is trying to replicate a system designed for humans. But other options could make things easier for robots.
    • For instance putting something like an RFID tag on clothing so that the robot doesn't have to do a complicated visual assessment of the clothing.
    • Most washing machines are also very much designed for humans. But a washing machine that was altered for robotic use would be far better.
    • For instance a machine that dumped the clothing out when it was done would be better than a machine where a machine has to reach in and pluck stuff out;
    • as would a unified washer/dryer.
    • Also the set up of a typical laundry room would be again poor. So to have the machine dump the clothing out onto a rimmed metal surface where the robot could pick things out (remember the rfid tags).
    • And folding the clothing would be more based on the clothing itself. The manufacturer could identify the optimal folding pattern (from the rfid tag) that the robot would use.
    • Then there are steps like ironing where again a robot wielding a traditional iron would be stupid. But one of those roller press things would be great.

    It would be like having a self driving car actually have hands and feet that can operate the steering wheel, tickers, gearshift etc while using eyes mounted on its head inside the car.

  • You are doing it wrong (Score:3)

    by Petr Kočmíd ( 3424257 ) on Saturday March 07, 2015 @11:22PM (#49207847)
    Probably a fembot or gynoid http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G... [wikipedia.org] is necessary to do all the tasks correctly.

  • The Singularity is near!

  • Whoever creates and markets the machine that does this gets all the money.

  • Hereâ(TM)s what a robot has to do.

    Very close solution already:
    http://spectrum.ieee.org/autom... [ieee.org]
    All but picking up dirty clothes, taking them to the washer, and putting them in. Heck, it was folding mixed clean clothes from the dryer five years ago. :-)

    Find the pile of dirty laundry, distinguishing it from other clutter that might be in the room.
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... [dailymail.co.uk]
    * But note: It IS the daily mail so grain of salt. Lol.
    This is possible now. But.. an easy mitigation is to require throwin

  • Hello American Investor, I see you are interested in distributing Mr. Sparkle in your home prefecture. You have chosen wisely. -- Mr. Sparkle, a joint venture of Matsumura Fishworks and Tamaribuchi Heavy Manufacturing Concern.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • They do seem to be making this rather more complicated by needing the robot to do laundry in an environment designed for humans.

    Even if we do want the robot to pick up clothes, I think it's quite reasonable to add a laundry hopper as part of the robot and design the washing machine and robot as a pair designed to interoperate. This eliminated to difficulty of carrying the basket. The washing machine knows how much detergent to add. The washing machine will open and close its own door. Washer/dryers exist
  • "... infinite doors that may or may not open." Is that literally an infinite number of doors?

  • We already have robots that do our laundry. We call them "washing machines." They save us from having to carry our clothes down to the river, soaking them in the current, rubbing them in the rocks, then drying them in the sun.

    My washing machine senses how much I have loaded into it, adds water, meters in the soap I have placed in the soap container, then goes through an elaborate ritual of swishing my clothes around in various ways with various combinations of hot and cold water until my clothes are clea

  • I'm not allowed to do my own laundry because my girlfriend thinks I'll screw it up and I write computer vision algorithms for a living.

  • Get some some clothes and they will figure it out.

    Reminds me of the TNG episode where Data meets his mother, and she tells an embarrassing story about how she had to program a modesty routine since he refused to wear clothes.

  • a) Dump everything in the wash

    b) Wash on heavy load, warm

    c) Put everything in the dryer

    d) Dry on automatic

    e) Put dry clothes in laundry tub

    f) Done. Owner will pull clothes out of tub to wear as necessary.

    Seems like you could do this with one of those Linux controller boards.

    Seriously, could part of the issue be that they're trying to make the problem too hard? Most clothes are colorfast these days, so separating whites and colors is no longer necessary. You still need to wash certain items in cold water

  • The main issue I have with this guys article is that he wants to make a laundry robot out of straw.

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