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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

I'm hanging on to folding clothes as my litmus test of AI :)

Or driving a car everywhere I can.

The thing is, I really think you could train a folding robot if you had the dataset to do it, just hire a few hundred clothes folding people who work for a large industrial laundry to wear eye tracker things and full body movement trackers. It'll probably 'just work' just like this and we still won't have an idea how, heh.

https://foldimate.com/

The last update to their blog was in 2019, so I think it's safe to say this is dead. When I click on their FAQ, I get the message, "This HappyFox account is expired. Please contact Administrator."

I did find a video[0]. It's just an automated version of the doohickey you see at any clothing store. Seems to require a lot of human input and orientation.

When I say "folding clothes" as a challenge for AI, I mean a device that is smart enough to take a pile of laundry, straight from the dryer, and fold each piece correctly. So if it's a t-shirt, then fold the arms inward, then fold that in half so the front is visible. If it's a pair of trousers, then fold each leg along the creases, match them together, and fold over the knee.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcKz63DGHrA

I'm with you :)

(see my sibling comment)

FWIW, it's probably going to be the case that some AI will be able to correctly produce the picture of what an item will look like, once it is folded.

(and when that is pointed out, it will be met with counter-arguments of "goalpost moving")

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/23/18512529/laundroid-laundr...

Hang on to NP complete problems instead, that one will stick around for a while I expect.

Folding clothes is more of a robotics problem than an AI problem. Paralyzed people are just as intelligent as everyone else!

I don't think robotics are the part holding back a clothes folding robot.

If you hooked up some basic manipulators to a VR controller, I'm pretty sure I could fold some shirts.

Not particularly well or quickly, but to a level that I'd be happy to see from a first generation shirt folding robot.

They're talking about the motion control and planning, which is certainly in the scope of what ML/AI is solving nowadays.

I'm sure that the physical part of this problem is also hard. But I have a lot more faith in robotics people coming up with the right "hands" with appropriate sensors on them to grasp a single piece of clothing and separate it from a pile, and then to manipulate that item on a large work area until it is folded. Maybe some delicate load sensors in the fingertips to adjust gripping force appropriately between the silk blouse and the corduroy trousers. Maybe no fingers at all, and just vacuum-and-pneumatic fabric handling devices. Or some other combination.

The things I've seen on assembly lines are beautiful and clever. But they all rely on a sort of consistency of input.

So yeah, that part is hard. But I think the intelligent control of whatever apparatus is used is harder still. To be able to recognize the different items, know when to turn them inside out, know when to bring the unbuttoned halves of a dress shirt together, etc. That's all very hard! Going from a chaotic pile of mixed clothing to a neat stack of folded garments is something a child can do easily, but no AI controlled robot in the world can do at all.

And if it fails on fitted bottom sheets, I won't dock it any points. Even I can't do that!

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