New robot to relieve you of your laundry

Laundroid is a robot that will 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.

Hate doing laundry? Shin Sakane has a solution. The Japanese inventor received 6 billion yen ($53 million) from partners, including Panasonic, last month to advance “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.” tories is currently valued at about 20 billion yen.

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. Ishii, a spokeswoman for Osakabased 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. with partners, it said on its website. First units should ship by 2018 and cost $700 to $850. With Laundroid, users won’t have to clip clothes onto the machine.

“The biggest challenge has always been the folding itself, both in terms of planning the fold and then manipulating the piece of clothing and actually performing the folding,” said Jonathan Roberts, a professor of robotics at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. “Others have tried using robotic arms. This is the first time I have seen sliding plates used. That sounds innovative.”