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Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

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Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#11

Post by cianestro »

noonespecial wrote: post #5

Anyone who's ever worked retail on the fitting-room -> shelf/hanger treadmill is now thinking feverish thoughts... Edit: Oh. Swing and miss! Feverish was the wrong word. I was not at all implying that this is a "teh robots took our yooobbss" scenario, rather, as someone who has folded and restocked many shirts, I'm excited about the prospect that this kind of drudgework could be spared us by robots. Philosophically,…

People have had to fold their own textiles for as long as they have had shame. The more abundant technology is, and indeed any resource, the more we can free up the greatest of all resources--the human mind. Great comments noonespecial.

btw: "mahmud," the robot can do whatever it's programmed to do, not just fold clothing ;)

Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#12

Post by mahmud »

cianestro wrote: post #11
noonespecial wrote: post #5

Anyone who's ever worked retail on the fitting-room -> shelf/hanger treadmill is now thinking feverish thoughts... Edit: Oh. Swing and miss! Feverish was the wrong word. I was not at all implying that this is a "teh robots took our yooobbss" scenario, rather, as someone who has folded and restocked many shirts, I'm excited about the prospect that this kind of drudgework could be spared us by robots. Philosophically,…

People have had to fold their own textiles for as long as they have had shame. The more abundant technology is, and indeed any resource, the more we can free up the greatest of all resources--the human mind. Great comments noonespecial. btw: "mahmud," the robot can do whatever it's programmed to do, not just fold clothing ;)

Every afternoon, I 'waste' 15 minutes of company time, leaving my desk as a highly paid software developer to do the dishes in the sink. No one told me to do it, we have a cleaning crew that comes at night, but I do it because it frees my mind -- the greatest of all resources.

Not all chores are "chores". Sometimes we just enjoy doing boring stuff.

Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#13

Post by pufuwozu »

I just want to point out that the robot's operating system is open-source and runs on heaps of different robot platforms:

http://www.ros.org/

The software is primary developed by Willow Garage, a start-up created by an ex-Googler that also has Larry Page on its board:

http://www.willowgarage.com/

You can actually simulate this specific robot and even write algorithms (in Python and C++ AFIAK) without having one:

http://www.ros.org/wiki/pr2_simulator

As you can probably tell, I really love how they're lowering the entry barrier for robotics programming!

Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#14

Post by Groxx »

pufuwozu wrote: post #13

I just want to point out that the robot's operating system is open-source and runs on heaps of different robot platforms: http://www.ros.org/ The software is primary developed by Willow Garage, a start-up created by an ex-Googler that also has Larry Page on its board: http://www.willowgarage.com/ You can actually simulate this specific robot and even write algorithms (in Python and C++ AFIAK) without having one: http…

That's pretty frickin' awesome... ideal for algorithm experimenting, and it could even help create a better-designed 'bot because you can experiment with different placements of tools.

Many thanks for the links! I'm definitely keeping those around...

Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#17

Post by anamax »

_bfhp wrote: post #15

My first reaction: How much time and money did this cost? How is this benefiting anything? Is this a test of some operating system that will be used on other, more useful things, or just a science project?

> Is this a test of some operating system that will be used on other, more useful things, or just a science project?

You say that like science projects don't lead to anything useful....

or

Everything is a science project until it ships.

Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#19

Post by drunkpotato »

_bfhp wrote: post #15

My first reaction: How much time and money did this cost? How is this benefiting anything? Is this a test of some operating system that will be used on other, more useful things, or just a science project?

Huh, how supremely uninteresting your first reaction is. I wish you hadn't shared your useless ungeekly feelings. But now that you have, I will share my first reaction: Cool!

Robotics is hard. We are just beginning to understand the amount of processing that goes into the simplest movement of living beings. We are still in the infancy of reverse engineering millions of years of evolution, and it is a wondrous new frontier of research!

Re: Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels

#20

Post by nzmsv »

_bfhp wrote: post #15

My first reaction: How much time and money did this cost? How is this benefiting anything? Is this a test of some operating system that will be used on other, more useful things, or just a science project?

Yes, universities do science. And cool projects. If they had to immediately sell whatever they invented, most research would never happen.
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