Forget androids, here’s the Laundroid
Hate doing laundry? Shin Sakane has a solution.
The Japanese inventor developed ‘‘the Laundroid’’ – a robot Sakane is developing to not only wash and dry garments, but also sort, fold and neatly arrange them. The refrigerator-size device could eventually fill the roles of washing machine, dryer and clothes drawer in people’s homes.
Sakane, whose earlier inventions include an anti-snoring device and golf clubs made of space materials, said the funding will bring closer his dream of liberating humanity from laundry.
Among his inspirations for the project is the 1968 Stanley Kubrick sci-fi classic 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Laundroid was designed to resemble the mysterious objects in the film that brought technology to prehistoric humans, and the project was originally code-named Monolith.
‘‘That’s what we had in-mind: a technology that never existed on Earth descends from space,’’ the 45-year-old Sakane, head of Seven Dreamers Laboratories, said. ‘‘If we could automate this, the act of doing laundry will be gone for good.’’
While the full product is slated for release in 2019, an early version that can only sort and fold clothing goes on sale worldwide in March.
Sakane wouldn’t disclose how Laundroid works, but patents show that users dump clothes in a lower drawer and robotic arms grab each item as scanners look for features such as buttons or a collar.
Once identified, the clothes are folded using sliding plates and neatly stacked on upper shelves for collection.
‘‘We tried so many things and none of them worked,’’ Sakane said last week. ‘‘A ton of team members quit, saying it’s impossible or that I’m crazy. But the ones who remained came up with some truly brilliant ideas.’’
The goal is to eventually get the price of the full version to less than about ¥300,000 ($3700). The model going on sale in March will probably cost significantly more because of higher initial production costs. Panasonic is slated to handle manufacturing.
‘‘We decided that by combining Panasonic’s washing and drying machine technology and 7D’s folding technology, it is possible to bring an all-in-one product to the market early,’’ said Kyoko Ishii, a spokeswoman for Panasonic.
Users will still have to do some tasks, such as partially buttoning shirts, ensuring clothes aren’t inside out, and bunching socks before putting them inside the machine. That’s because even the best machine-learning applications can’t figure out how to fold a pair of socks.
Each item takes about 10 minutes to fold, which Sakane attributed to the time necessary to scan each part of the clothing and communicate via wi-fi with a central server. He is working to get it down to 3-to-5 minutes, but said the robot was designed to be used passively while users are doing something else or out of the house.
Sakane isn’t the only one trying to reinvent the washing. FoldiMate, a California-based rival, said it will take about half a minute to de-wrinkle and fold each garment through its dryer-size machine. It’s received more than 160,000 registrations of interest in its laundry-folder, which will require users to clip clothes onto a conveyor-belt from which a robot takes, treats, de-wrinkles and folds each item onto a neat pile.
The company will start accepting pre-orders in 2017, once a manufacturing plan has been finalised with partners, it said on its website. First units should ship by 2018 and cost US$700-$850.
Still, it’s questionable whether consumers will spend thousands of dollars for such a device, and it is probably ‘‘many years away’’ until a robot system can do the task cheaply enough.
That’s not deterring Sakane. He plans to work with apparel makers and app developers to create software that makes use of the data the robots collect, such as the clothes worn and how often, which could be invaluable to both marketers and consumers. – Bloomberg