A lot of machines are developed to wash and dry clothes. The question, "why isn't there a way to automate the dreaded folding process in a similar way?" arises
NPR reported that researchers have looked into it through the years, and as it turns out, robotic inventions are not good at laundry folding tasks.
For years, companies have tried to automate laundry folding with limited success. Now, researchers have cracked the code with a new method — but you might be able to do it faster yourself.https://t.co/fM8bJaxSig
— NPR (@NPR) October 23, 2022
As this same report also indicates, there's a need for machines with clear rules to work efficiently, and it is difficult for them to find out what precisely is going on in those messy piles, like where the underwear stops and the towel starts.
That is not to say that it is impossible. Pieter Abbeel spent years teaching a robot how to fold a towel, eventually cutting that process down from 20 minutes to one-and-a-half minutes.
Fast-Tracking the Folding Process
In early 2019, a Silicon-based tech firm FoldiMate raised eyebrows and hopes when it exhibited a prototype of its eponymous laundry-folding robot during the Consumer Electronics Show that year.
The company said the machine could fold about 25 pieces of laundry, except for small items such as socks and large ones like sheets, in less than five minutes.
It is unclear what happened to that firm. Its website is currently down, and hasn't been posted on Twitter since April 2020. Its sole competitor, a Japanese firm with an artificial intelligence-powered prototype, filed for bankruptcy.
In general, most robots have not been equipped typically for the task. However, an international team of researchers said their new approach could change that or at least fast-track the process.
SpeedFolding
Researchers call this new approach SpeedFolding. It is reliable, not to mention an efficient bimanual system which means it involves a pair of hands that can smooth and fold a crumpled garment at record speed for robots.
Essentially, as mentioned in the pre-printed study published in arXiv, this new technology can fold up to 40 strewn-about garments an hour, compared to previously developed models that averaged three to six garments in that same span, the researchers explained.
The team also said that their robot could fold items in less than two minutes, with a 93-percent success rate.
Real-world experiments reveal that the system can generalize to unseen garments of different shapes, stiffness, and colors.
Machine-Assisted Laundry-Folding
SpeedFolding is taking a different approach, the researchers said. First, the BimManual Manipulation Network, a novel neural network, investigated more than 4,000 human and machine-assisted actions to learn how smooth and fold garments are from the random configurations.
Such a process can engage a number of defined movements, including dragging, moving, filing, and "pick-and-place."
According to an Ars Technica report, the system needs to analyze the initial state of the garment using an overhead camera and calculate where to grab it with its pair of arms to get the garment to the succeeding desired step in the folding process.
A report about the fastest laundry folding is shown on CityNews' YouTube video below:
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