Automatic laundry folding | Hacker News Reader

Automatic laundry folding

foldimate.com

68 pointsandreapaiola72 comments

The cardboard box solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv7y2n0fOhw

The industrial solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKgHEz05lqw

A black box that just as well can be Searle's chinese room: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7apeh4tjsgI

I think however the wrong thing is optimized here. I don't care about the folding. I do care about the steaming. If I could steam it at home, that would be awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q-iDj6U3M

I go to the gym each morning for a swim. Before I do I hang my crumpled shirt on a hanger, take it into the steam room and shake it for like 15 seconds, then take it into the sauna for a moment if no one is in there, then hang it in my locker. After the swim it is beautifully crease free and totally dry.

Saves ironing at home then having it crumple in my bag.

I've used this for years...no equipment required, the easiest way to fold t-shirts and polos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbopCuN6TA

You forgot the wonky '60s-look robot solution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo

(Actually, pretty cool).

Your industrial solution reminded me of the time I worked at a factory feeding books into conveyor belts. I guess I'm weird so I kind of enjoyed the sensation of my fingers and my hands learning to grab exactly the right number of catalogues from a cardboard box, or exactly the right page to open a magazine on to stick a cd in etc, after I'd done it a few dozen times already in a day. And at least I'm grateful I only had to do one set of repetitive moves for each task (rather than the whole symphony of manipulations the machines performed).

But, man, is that sort of work inhumane and soul-destroying. I'd have been soul-destroyed myself if I had a soul.

(No, seriously, that sort of work sucks so much)

The towel solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo ;-)

> I don't care about the folding. I do care about the steaming. If I could steam it at home, that would be awesome

I often visit the comments first, but I typically take the time to at least skim the respective article before commenting:

"DE-WRINKLING

Get those pesky wrinkles removed using steam"

In case you refer to the fact if I read the article, yes I did and I referred to it in a way in which I stipulated that I liked that it is steaming, but I don't mind the folding. Don't try to read too much in a comment.

It's not only for T-shirts or single-shape dress...

This is not very impressive. I want to be able to dump an armload of clothes hot out of the dryer into a hopper and forget about it. Having to sort and hang the clothes on those clips (of which there don't appear to be very many) is more than half the work!

Who has time to dump? The only dumping I want to do is the dumping of duty laundry into the laundry input hole.

That would be the logical next step: integrated washing, drying, and folding.

There's a service for that: domestic worker. Pretty expensive nowadays though.

Standard wash and fold service is not that expensive, at least in NYC, and usually they'll pick up and drop off for free.

which is why the people who do this (if it happens) will be the people who make (and certify, sell and deliver) "automatic" washer/dryers.

Yes! I expected it to have this functionality. Dump stuff from the drying machine, get sorted, get folded.

What this machine claims to do is too little to be really worth the money and space it takes.

From the FAQ, (emphasis mine):

> There is less than a 1% chance that FoldiMate will do anything other than fold your laundry and treat your clothes.

Let's be generous and say that less than 1% means .5% chance. Assuming each clothing fold is an independent event, that means if you fold 20 articles of clothing then you have a 90% chance of not destroying one of them[1].

I like those odds!

[1]: (1 - .005)^20 = 0.90461048

Presumably the target demographic hasn't head to deal with a printer paper jam in a long time.

"anything other than fold your laundry and treat your clothes." != "destroy clothes"

Yeah I'm curious what the compliment of "fold your laundry and treat your clothes" is.

Only thing we can say for sure is that it's "not fold your laundry or not treat your clothes"

Is it just me or does this look very sketchy/like vaporware? They start off clipping the shirts into those things and then they flip to a CGI render, suggesting they don't even have a working prototype, and yet they're already accepting "pre-orders." For a startup that was started in 2012 (and the founder is listed as one of the seed investors) this seems like worryingly little progress.

Yep. Another crowdsourcing/preordering scam. As I say for other things, if it ever ships, I'll wait for the retail product and pay a bit more.

This looks like yet another crowdfunding vaporware. Their demo video is CGI, and the release date is 2017.

Crowfunding? Do you see the investors?

Pre-selling is still crowdfunding, even with investors. Take a look at Cinder, as an example. They're YC-backed, crowd-funded, and are missing their promised ship date by several months.

Like Tesla? :D

Not at all like Tesla. There were commercial electric cars in the late 90s before Tesla was even founded. They weren't inventing anything, they were making it cheap enough for mass marketing.

They also didn't need pre-orders to deliver their first cars, and it hasn't been a staple of survival. They're still around because they've raised absurd amounts of VC (over $2B).

Yeah, I hang up my clothes, so...

If you want to save a crapton of time on doing laundry, throw out all your socks and buy the same kind. I standardized on UndeR Armor Resistor. Cheap, last about a year, seem to stay in profuction forever. If every household member does that, you never have to play the sock pairing game again.

That's a great idea until you get into cases like:

light colored pants with low shoes (you need light socks)

dark colored pants with low shoes (you need dark socks)

running (you need thin socks with no seams)

hiking (you need hiking socks, or at least thicker ones, and probably two pairs that you can wear at the same time, and multiple sets)

cycling (you can use the same ones you use for running, but your generic black socks probably won't do it)

Only a heathen would wear the same socks in all of these circumstances.

Matching socks to pants vs to shoes is its own debate, but that's why I picked the socks I did: they are great for exercising, black in color, so go well with jeans and also go well with my black and white Chucks.

I do have several pairs of specialty socks: a pair for dressy occasions, a very thick woolen pair for extreme cold, and a couple of pairs of taller socks for when I need the extra protection. That works just fine because I pull those out roughly three times a year so there is very little matching to do. Obviously, this is not the fashion forward thing to do, but I think for working in a casual setting and meeting friends for a beer once in a while it works just fine.

I wear blue jeans almost exclusively. And I don't run, cycle, or hike. So this is a very workable idea.

For the true laundryphobe, you can buy socks in bulk for less than a dollar a pair. Just wear a new pair every day and throw them out when you're done.

I don't actually do this, FWIW, but talking about it is a fantastic way to annoy an environmentalist at a bar. I often threaten to create a startup around the "disposable clothing subscription" idea, 9 out of 10 at the table are horrified by the wastefulness or think it's ridiculous that people consider matching socks to be a nuisance at all, but that last person is so lazy that they'd almost consider it if the price was right.

I suspect it probably wouldn't make a great subscription business, pack/ship costs would make the margins really tight if you wanted to stay around the $1/pair price point (and you'd be sourcing really crummy socks even to get there), so I think you'd have to go pretty far up-market. Who knows, maybe that could work (it looks like a ton of sock-of-the-month premium subscription box things do exist), though probably not for daily disposable socks.

Only after you have standardized the foot size of your household members...

No you want every household member to have their own brand/color/size. That way you can quickly separate them.

Absolutely. I go for black army surplus socks, which I think cost about 1gbp a pair last time I bought a batch, which was ages ago.

If you want to save an additional crap kilogram of time, don't bother throwing out your socks and buying new ones (unless worn out), just wear the first two socks you pull out, regardless of color or pattern. Because who cares?

Hmm. "Because who cares" meant who cares what socks you have on? I actually do wear whatever comes out of my sock drawer, and I throw away singles, not pairs, so my socks are often mismatched.

Did you just reply to yourself?

It doesn't really take very long to actually fold shirts and pants, most of the time is spent on sorting. I would think in the amount of time it takes you to properly clip a shirt onto the machine, you should easily have folded it yourself.

Maybe you don't do laundry for other people in your family. One of my chores was laundry. For a family of 5. As a teenager, it was the pits. Anything to shave 10 mins of my chores would have sounded like a great idea.

As was mine. But when I think back, part of the major difficulty wasn't the shirts and pants... it was the underwear and the socks. Those took some time. But even then, this thing costs more than replacing the dryer, and I'd still have had to carry the stuff out to the clothesline and back in the summer.

When I was even younger, however, my mother wanted nearly everything ironed. If you are one of those sorts, the machine would be wonderful.

So teenage you would have spent $1000 on this machine?

You're right, and I think that if machines like this worked as claimed, we would see commercial laundries using them first.

There are already a, proportionally, lot of comments of the sort "this doesn't save that much time" or "folding doesn't take that long".

Then, don't buy it. But to suggest that, in America, land of the Snuggie, The Clapper, Feet Socks, and single serve automatic coffee brewers, come on. There is a place in the market for something that makes doing laundry a little less misserable.

> America, land of the Snuggie, The Clapper, Feet Socks, and single serve automatic coffee brewers, come on.

I think part of the equation is that none of those things cost $750. You could spend tht much on a coffee brewer, but at that point you're getting into some nice espresso machines.

This is the fashion argument. "Build it and they will come because, well, we don't know" is a horrible horrible way to start a business.

> There is a place in the market for something that makes doing laundry a little less misserable.

Not really. If it makes laundry a lot less misserable I totally agree, but only 10x solutions win. If you make laundry 1.5x easier for me, I'm still not dropping close to $1k for the device. It needs to be life changing.

While this is pretty interesting, the machine seems pretty bulky. I also wonder how accurate you have to be with the way you hang up the clothes on those clips. I'm sure if you're a little off the clothes won't last right. The other drawback I notice is that it seems this only folds tops. Pretty pricey and bulky for a one trick pony.

From the website:

"FoldiMate will fold and treat most of your laundry (e.g. shirts, pants, towels). Except for large items like linen or small items like underwear or socks" [1]

[1] https://www.foldimate.com/

I get your point, but consider any household with higher income and you'll see all kinds of specialty appliances. (Central vaccums, wine fridges, warming drawers) so a dedicated folding machine would fit right in.

To your point about tops, if you watch the video I could see it being capable to do pants, you may have to fold them over once when you hang them.

Hold up. A wine fridge is not in the same category as this. A wine fridge is a necessity.

I concur, wine fridges are totally a necessity!

I pity the savages who lack such basics.

  > We start with a neat, professionally looking fold 
  > * More methods will be available via FoldiMate’s “internet store”

That's potentially interesting; are we basically talking about software unlocking of capabilities here, i.e. like Tesla's autopilot?

I think they're planning an app store. Got an app for folding dresses?

I was thinking something like Folding @ home.

(Sorry, couldn't resist).

Maybe new sizes/shapes?

If someone could create a machine that actually put the laundry away, we'd get one (or at least covet one) in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, for our family of five, the folding part of the operation really isn't where most of the labor is.

I always used 'laundry folding' as a counterexample for fears of automation. This clumsy machine is case is point that pervasive automation is far far far away.

It really depends on the task.

Driving seems much more complicated than folding, but driving is nearly solved, while folding is still difficult due to the complexity of recognizing non-standard shapes and figuring out how to manipulate them.

Driving is a huge job market in the US, so the automation apocalypse for low-income Americans is on its way. I'm not sure what else on farms will be automated, but it's certainly being worked on. I imagine fast food a lot of retail is also going to be more automated. One example is grocery stores: they used to have 5-10 cashiers working at a time, and now they have 0-2 (due to self checkout). Grocery delivery will eat into those jobs even more.

> but driving is nearly solved, while folding is still difficult due to the complexity of recognizing non-standard shapes and figuring out how to manipulate them.

but doesn't driving have even more ambiguity and a million times more complex( not to mention dangerous) than folding laundry ?.Are you saying it has been solved due to economic incentives ?

These exact problems have been discussed several times, sometimes in the same article, because of how surprising this is to people. I was really surprised when I first learned it, too.

Here's an example of some discussion: http://hackaday.com/2016/02/24/the-challenges-of-a-laundry-f...

There are already clothes folding machines at the industrial level so it's not that far fetched.

They're used on t-shirt screen printing lines, for example.

>They're used on t-shirt screen printing lines, for example.

yea but that's not a fair characterization of the problem though. ofcourse automation is works great when there is no ambiguity but fails miserably when there is even a little ambiguity.

There's also Laundroid announced last year that can supposedly fold your clothes without hanging it first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7apeh4tjsgI

This isn't satire? I thought I'd come to the comments to see comments about it.

It's a real potential product? The WSJ reviews like "I'm going to save up for the FoldiMate! That's what I am waiting for." is REAL?

...

According to US government, women spend 16 minutes a day, on average, doing laundry, and men spend 4 minutes on average. That's over a 100 hours a year for women, so yes, there is probably a lot of demand for a technology that makes this faster.

I can see this in a commercial setting, but any family/household that wants to drop $600+ dollars on a folding appliance, may be better served with a $30+ / week maid, who also does the folding.

How does one justify $600+ on saving 16 min a day? How does one sell this to any consumer with a >$100,000 income to a household?

If we solved self driving. It may be possible to place all your clothes on a tote and have a robot pick all your clothes and take them to an automated washing, drying, ironing and folding facility.

Before that point, laundry service is a great candidate for automobile trunk pickup and delivery. Just put your stinkables in a trunk box, have them removed at some point in the day, then your clean, folded clothes are delivered to your trunk the next day. It just happens, like a laundry fairy.

The problem right now is that trunk pickup and delivery is not really an expected use case. Cars aren't really designed to support delivery drivers/automation being able to open your trunk and only your trunk, especially without a key.

But it could be something that can be retrofitted decently, thanks to US-mandated inside trunk releases. And at the high end, limited-entry trunk delivery is already being tested in some places: http://www.wired.com/2015/04/delivery-drivers-can-now-leave-...

and we are wondering why a lot of Americans are obese. Simple tasks like these help burn a few calories.

What?! Do you fold your clothes? It burns about as many calories as watching TV and picking up the remote on commercial breaks...

Folding a week of laundry for 3 people takes about an hour. Reclaiming that time and doing actual exercise instead would work miracles.

If we all spent hours per day on unnecessary manual labor instead of our jobs or learning, yes, obesity probably wouldn't be an issue anymore.

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