Sunday, December 4, 2016

A Robot is Being Developed to Wash, Dry, Sort and Fold Your Clothes

A prototype of the Laundroid
Free market creativity is awesome.

The Japanese inventor Shin Sakane received 6 billion yen ($53 million) from partners, including Panasonic Corp., 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, reports Bloomberg.

The first model will be out in March 2017. The goal is to eventually get the price of the full version to less than about 300,000 yen ($2,700). But the March model will probably cost significantly more due to higher initial production costs. Panasonic is slated to handle manufacturing.

The prototype machine, called the Laundroid, however,can’t figure out how to fold a pair of socks or button shirts.

According to Bloomberg, 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.

1 comment:

  1. Running a clothes dryer while out of the home is plain stupid.

    Prosperity ! Liberty !

    ReplyDelete