PR2 Very Close to Completing Laundry Cycle | Hacker News Reader

PR2 Very Close to Completing Laundry Cycle

spectrum.ieee.org

36 pointsspectruman20 comments

Fun for parents: replace every mention of the robot in this article with your teenager's name and see if they are doing better or worse.

We could be facing the teen laundry equivalent of Deep Blue defeating Kasparov!

Just making an attempt, however futile, would outmatch many teenagers. Build a little three wheeled thing that bumps into the nearest washing machine and you've already beaten that game.

Innovation I have been waiting for - and would love to build if set free from endless employment is an automatic laundry solution: takes clothes from dirty bin, places in washer, then dryer (or combo) and then folds or hangs and puts away. The reality is that the home laundry systems are not well built for automation which is where a lot of the challenges are introduced. It might need to be something integrated into the closet or drawer system. I like to think of it as encapsoluted. I would put my dresser and hamper so that I have access and behind it is the robot which would grab the dirty clothes and refill the clean drawers.

The other one is pretty analogous - dishes are a giant waste of time. One awesome hack is having two dishwashers and then never using your cabinets, but its pretty hacky. The clean way is to integrate the output of the dishwasher with the cabinet.

I would pay serious money for this simply because of how much of my life is wasted dealing with clothes and dishes. The collective man hours world wide of these tasks is actually probably pretty insane.

I completely agree. Another bad design is bathrooms. I think they should be designed and be sealable like the inside of a giant dishwasher, and then just turn on a cleaning cycle to clean the entire bathroom.

I once read about a system that works like that. I believe it was a self-contained unit that was intended to be deployed out in a public place, outdoors, like a "port-o-potty" but more high-tech. Japan? Europe? Somewhere like that.

(On a related note, I have way too many specific ideas about how to do restrooms right. I've literally written documents about it, made checklists, done designs, etc. Most public restrooms Fail in one or more ways, usually several. Feels like should be a solved problem with best practices in place everywhere. Not rocket science.)

Various public restrooms in San Francisco work like that. I have heard of people trying to stay inside to watch the washing happen by tricking the occupancy sensors. I'm not sure if this ends well ever.

This is what I've called The Third Machine for a while now.

  The First Machine - Washer   
  The Second Machine - Dryer   
  The Third Machine - Folder

I want to be able to buy The Third Machine.

It exists: http://www.foldimate.com/

On a commercial scale, big laundries have automatic folding machines. Clothing plants have folding, bagging, and sealing machines.

That one looks fairly weak. The video implies fairly strong requirements on placing the clothing to be folded on the machine. Do other machines exist which just accept a bundle of crumpled up, undifferentiated clothes?

Seems like this would be drastically simplified using a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combo_washer_dryer such as these http://www.homedepot.com/b/Appliances-Washers-Dryers-All-In-...

This was my exact thought and it would be even simpler if Monotub[0] or Orbit[1] existed/worked.

I know this is really about AI challenges rather than washing clothes, but the list of steps seems more complex than it needs to be. For example, I already put my dirty clothes straight in to a laundry basket. I don't think I'm ever going to need a robot to scoop them off the floor for me, I can't imagine my time being so valuable that I can't put my shirt in the basket.

[0] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1740246.stm

[1] http://www.coroflot.com/tiffanyroddis/orbital

Having a robot use a washing machine is awesome, but couldn't we cut out the middleman and just have the robot "hand" wash the clothes? I like the idea of replacing most special purpose appliances with general purpose robots. Instead of having a separate washing machine, clothes dryer, dishwasher, stand mixer, blender, cuisinart, toaster, trash compactor, icemaker, breadmaker, rice cooker, and garbage disposal, your general purpose robot could handle it all with a few tools.

Despite the awesomeness of the robotics achievement, I can't help but be mildly disappointed this isn't about cstross' works: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2011/01/laundry-...

Please add "empty pants pockets" to that list of a complete laundry cycle. Otherwise the only thing PR2 is close to is ruining all my clothes. :-) Lip balm, pens, crayons, etc.

And while we're at it, it also needs to treat any stains, otherwise you may make them worse. :-)

In my household (with my wife and I doing the laundry), items in pockets are considered to be unacceptable input for the laundry chute, with undefined behavior. I imagine that many other households are similar. It'd be a bit unfair to hold the robots to a higher standard.

Similar for stains: They need to be treated before they go into the normal laundry cycle, and are often given special treatment for the entire process.

Garbage in, garbage out, eh? :-) Well then the robot needs to stop picking up clothes off the floor. ;-)

As a first pass, I think we can require humans to still do some work - it's not like the robot is going to take my laundry basket from the room...

This is really fantastic progress. I've always wanted to build a fully automated home, which would include a laundry robot like this.

That's great! I thought that effort died with Willow Robotics, but it continues.

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