Folding your clothes after doing laundry is a tedious task that no one enjoys. If you never want to fold your clothes ever again, this might be an invention you might be interested in.
Researchers at the University of California-Berkley revealed a robot that has the ability to fold clothes faster than any previous automaton. The team from the school’s AUTOLAB said the robot can fold 30 to 40 randomly positioned garments per hour. This compares to only three to six folds per hour for all previous clothes-folding robots.
The robot, named SpeedFolding, uses a neural network called BiManual Manipulation Network, which interprets inputs from machine vision, as well as folds the clothing using a pair of robot arms. You have to get the job done one way or another.
“Folding garments reliably and efficiently is a long-standing challenge in robotic manipulation,” the researchers wrote.
The group submitted a paper for presentation at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2022, which is set to happen in Kyoto, Japan. This paper goes over the details of the robot’s creation and capabilities.