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Yeah someone made a big claim about it being increadibly hard for robots to deal with cloth. It's true it is tricky, but the shirt folding problems has been solved for a while.

https://foldimate.com/

https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/10/16865506/laundroid-laundr...

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So in the video, the user still had to manually insert each piece of clothing into the machine individually. I would have just folded it myself at that point and it would have been quicker too. I thought the whole point was for human not to have bother with this meaningless non-value added task.

"The Foldimate demo I saw wasn’t actually a fully working prototype, meaning clothes-folding technology wasn’t all there yet."

So not quite solved just yet. And I'll give you long odds against them working out the kinks in the next five years.

A general purpose cloth folder is difficult, but standardized pieces are covered.

https://youtu.be/OpiFp9i6owY?t=209

It's tough, but the industrial laundry business more or less has this working. Not much AI, lots of compressed air.

1. Robes and sheets != shirts

2. Human operators are doing the heavy lifting (quite literally) by loading the pieces one by one in a standardized initial state.

I'm talking about a machine that will fold men's shirts that are initially sitting in a pile just as they came out of the dryer.

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