Hacker News Reader

I don't think we can build a robot that takes a pile of crumpled up clothes from the dryer and folds them (reliably without destroying any of them).

View on HN

I think the parent's point - and what I more or less agree with - is that the problem is the hardware.

Human arms and hands are incredibly intricate. Reproducing their facility with hardware requires a large number of actuators and finicky fine parts. This isn't a software problem. Industry solves it with maintenance schedules.

There's probably nothing in your house that has as many moving parts as a robot needs. Your car maybe, and pretty much all it does is rotate wheels.

That's part of it but OP presented it as a solved problem but the hardware is expensive/unreliable.

That's not the case. I've seen folding robots. They require standardized input, only fold one type of clothing and don't do it reliably.

Yes we can do this, and if you look for it you'll find plenty of videos of this happening.

But you can't buy it because it'll break in about seven days.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com