I'm pretty certain that if these were actually ready there'd be commercial uses of them first, where they see a lot more use and thus generate a lot more value than any household has laundry.
Robot operated laundry on a cruise ship or something.
Yeah, but not for this or similar tasks... (unless I'm out of date?)
Working with fabric is notoriously difficult. Doubly so when we're talking random unknown pieces of fabric already sewed together by some third party and not simple rolls of it that need to be transformed in known ways into clothing.
The goal at this stage is largely training data collection so it can reach widescale use. Just like self driving variations in multiple different cities, the data needed for AI robotics is broad with a million niche usecases, so it makes sense it's not strictly commercial.
They need visual recording of tele-operated robots (or humans with headset cameras) doing normal household stuff like folding laundry in real environments so it can be fully automated. Which is what funds a lot of this stuff since that training data is a goldmine right now if a company can collect enough of it.
I think that is backwards. If you are replacing full time staff you need a system that works just as fast for the same or less money. For home use, you don't care if it takes 3 hours to make your bed or just stops for a while when waiting for a teleoperator to become available.
[−]morpheuskafka · 2026-07-02 Thu 06:59 UTC ·
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> For home use, you don't care if it takes 3 hours to make your bed or just stops for a while when waiting for a teleoperator to become available.
But why would you pay thousands and store a clunky machine in your home for that? Either you don't care about the bed being made or not -- in which case just don't, its not essential -- or you'd have it made already in 30-60 seconds when you got up before you could even get the thing turned on.
Folding laundry is the same thing. It says 30-90 minutes, I assume for one wash load? A human couldn't possibly take more than 30 minutes. And a human with a folding board could do it in 5-10. So unless you do not care about laundry at all, it would drive you crazy to watch that machine blocking your hallway for over an hour slowly folding a single load.
Alternatively, a wash/dry/fold service will deliver them to your door not just folded, but neatly packed in dustproof bags. (This is a major life hack when packing for a trip btw.)
Robot operated laundry on a cruise ship or something.
Working with fabric is notoriously difficult. Doubly so when we're talking random unknown pieces of fabric already sewed together by some third party and not simple rolls of it that need to be transformed in known ways into clothing.
They need visual recording of tele-operated robots (or humans with headset cameras) doing normal household stuff like folding laundry in real environments so it can be fully automated. Which is what funds a lot of this stuff since that training data is a goldmine right now if a company can collect enough of it.
But why would you pay thousands and store a clunky machine in your home for that? Either you don't care about the bed being made or not -- in which case just don't, its not essential -- or you'd have it made already in 30-60 seconds when you got up before you could even get the thing turned on.
Folding laundry is the same thing. It says 30-90 minutes, I assume for one wash load? A human couldn't possibly take more than 30 minutes. And a human with a folding board could do it in 5-10. So unless you do not care about laundry at all, it would drive you crazy to watch that machine blocking your hallway for over an hour slowly folding a single load.
Alternatively, a wash/dry/fold service will deliver them to your door not just folded, but neatly packed in dustproof bags. (This is a major life hack when packing for a trip btw.)