Take a load off your feet with robots

Shin Sakane with a prototype of the Laundroid, his laundry-folding robot, in Tokyo. Laundroid is backed by $90 million in investment capital and will retail at first for $16,000, though the goal is to bring the cost down to $2,000 per unit; Sakane said the inspiration came from his wife. brain will connect to a server that is constantly learning best folding methods for each type of clothing by downloading data from all the other Laundroids. This hive mind promises to be able to differentiate between T-shirts, overalls and rompers, fold each according to its needs and sort them into separate piles for members of the household.

Slowly. In the first-generation Laundroid, image analysis of each garment takes up to 10 minutes; folding only a minute or two. But that adds up to nearly a full workday for a full load.

Gal Rozov, an inventor of FoldiMate, said his machine was faster. It requires users to clip each article of clothing to its front, making recognition simpler. The machine then pulls each into itself and folds.

“The whole idea is to have the experience of handing items over to a friend, who will do that hard labour for you,” Rozov said in a telephone interview from outside Tel Aviv.

Using this process, it will complete a load “in minutes,” he said.

Via a crowdfunding campaign on its website, Rozov’s company has taken in about 8,000 deposits of US$85, each granting the customer a 10 per cent discount off the final product, which has a target price of US$850, he said. The company aims to open pre-orders by the end of the year and to start deliveries at the end of 2018.

While the modern laundry room is generally built to contain a separate washer and dryer, Whirlpool’s market research has found that many consumers will be interested in buying two washer/dryer hybrids and standing them side by side to increase capacity and to reduce time spent on the chore, Whah said.

Last year, about 17 million washers and dryers were sold in the United States, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. Sakane projected that Laundroid sales could reach 20 million units a year worldwide.

Perhaps. But as Whah noted, consumers still consider the core benefit of laundry to be “getting your clothes clean in the washer and dry in the dryer.”

Annalee Newitz, a technology writer, wondered in a phone interview if Laundroid would eventually become like a bread machine: an oft-gifted, rarely used appliance. A prototype of the Laundroid, his laundry-folding robot.