I hate doing laundry. Switching to using a wash and fold service was one of the best decisions for improving the quality of my life. I pay $40 every couple weeks to get all my clothes washed and folded. I love robots, but they're not going to beat inexpensive skilled human labor anytime soon.
AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
141–150 of 198 posts
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
Slightly tangential but on the other hand, washing clothes pollutes the oceans with plastic[0][1] i.e. washing more frequently causes more pollution. [0]: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/sep/27/washing-clot... [1]: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/9/19/17800654/clothes-pla...
“Syntactic fibers” is a major limitation on that research. 100% cotton/silk etc clothes don’t have that issue.
True, but if you've shopped for clothes in the US/Europe then you surely noticed that most clothing contains some percentage of synthetic fibers.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#143Lets remember that failure is an expected part of the game. Most ambitious product r&d projects fail quitely, inside big companies. Folding laundry is a famously hard problem.
Lets also remember that I really want a wardrobe that takes my dirty clothes and restocks itself with clean clothes.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Folding arbitrary pile of laundry completely unsupervised is super hard computing and robotics problem FTFY. And the business proposition isn't "limited", it's stupid. An attempt to throw technology somewhere it cannot compete. The opportunity cost for that $16k is paying somebody minimum wage to fold clothes for you for over 2000 hours. That would last a family of four about 38 years (just folding). Cleaners, hous…
well, you're assuming that its' only an hour of folding a week. It's highly variable for different people. But for families that do fold most of their clothes (and folding is the better way to store your clothes than just hanging it), many would spend over an hour doing it. My wife does most the laundry and we got two kids. It's a good half a day to clean all our weekly clothes, towels and sheets. There's a market fo…
I'm basing that on an extrapolation of our family, yes, but we do have a toddler, so I'm not that out of kilter with real life.
Remember we're only talking about folding here. I don't think we spend much more than an hour contact time doing the full cycle. But for folding, I allow 20 seconds an item, 180 items... With absolutely no checking, that seems right.
However you look at your personal situation, you have to generate a lot more load before you're not talking about a period of duration which would clearly outstrips the lifetime of the clothes-folding robot.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Folding arbitrary pile of laundry completely unsupervised is super hard computing and robotics problem FTFY. And the business proposition isn't "limited", it's stupid. An attempt to throw technology somewhere it cannot compete. The opportunity cost for that $16k is paying somebody minimum wage to fold clothes for you for over 2000 hours. That would last a family of four about 38 years (just folding). Cleaners, hous…
This version. It isn't ready yet. If they do a $2k robot that finds my dirty clothing on the floor and puts clean clothing in the correct closet/draws (my kids, wife, and mine...) and I'm interested. Laundry takes a lot of time, and paying someone isn't really cost effective.
> paying someone isn't really cost effective.
In particular, paying someone to do something makes you subject to a lot of extra regulations, which exist mainly because there's plenty of evil people who like to abuse people they hire. Getting a robot to do something for you is free from all that baggage, and if you mistreat your robot, it's only your loss.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
What difference does your Haier make? I don't follow the effect it has. I'm from Ireland where using a washing machine and a clothesline is the norm and a drier is less common. I think I might be missing some of the context for your point
I'm not sure that it's really the key difference. The main thing is that its small load size, together with needing to line dry, encourages us to be more judicious about how frequently we wash our garments. I wouldn't be surprised if the way that it agitates turns out to be gentler, though. Dryers are probably the worst of it. Every time you clean a lint trap, it's a demonstration of how much wear and tear they put o…
Ah cool, yeah I would agree with you. I was wondering if there was an extra dimension I was missing
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Folding arbitrary pile of laundry completely unsupervised is super hard computing and robotics problem FTFY. And the business proposition isn't "limited", it's stupid. An attempt to throw technology somewhere it cannot compete. The opportunity cost for that $16k is paying somebody minimum wage to fold clothes for you for over 2000 hours. That would last a family of four about 38 years (just folding). Cleaners, hous…
This version. It isn't ready yet. If they do a $2k robot that finds my dirty clothing on the floor and puts clean clothing in the correct closet/draws (my kids, wife, and mine...) and I'm interested. Laundry takes a lot of time, and paying someone isn't really cost effective.
I'll start positively, by agreeing. Yes, if you can make a robot for $2k that does all that, cooks and cleans, perhaps teaches the kids to ride their bikes, dispenses oral sex, etc, again yes, they will sell and sell fast. But that's really a very significant distance from what we have, which is a constellation of very expensive robots that are demonstrably worse than humans at doing tasks unskilled humans are pretty good at.
Even at the most basic level, a vacuum cleaner... It wasn't until last year that there was a self-emptying model. It still insanely slow. It's suction is still objectively awful. It still gets blocked up by anything hairier than a large cat. It still can't get into certain places. But that's going to be $1000 and you're still going to have to set it up, fix is when it breaks, etc.
A $200 stick vacuum and 10 minutes/week cumulative contact is much better. That $800 saved could pay for somebody to do that vacuuming (and more!) for you for 100 hours. Really, tell me what's more "cost effective".
But yes, if we somehow get a magical level of robot that can transcend stairs on their own, carry 20KG of washing up and down, fold it all up, put it away... That would be worth $2k. But that's just a robotic unicorn at this juncture.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
This version. It isn't ready yet. If they do a $2k robot that finds my dirty clothing on the floor and puts clean clothing in the correct closet/draws (my kids, wife, and mine...) and I'm interested. Laundry takes a lot of time, and paying someone isn't really cost effective.
> paying someone isn't really cost effective. In particular, paying someone to do something makes you subject to a lot of extra regulations, which exist mainly because there's plenty of evil people who like to abuse people they hire. Getting a robot to do something for you is free from all that baggage, and if you mistreat your robot, it's only your loss.
Agencies can insulate clients from that sort of junk. A small percentage over the base, tends to bring liability insurance with it, so it's usually worth it.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought i was doing this by only getting black socks. Now I have a drawer full of very subtly different black socks
Just lean into this one and buy brightly colored and patterned socks instead. That way, you're obviously always wearing mismatched socks, and it becomes an obviously deliberate (if eccentric) fashion choice instead of a repeated sartorial goof-up. Also, you get to wear socks that are more fun.
This is a very useful hack. I'm gonna try it out.
Socks didn't use to be a fashion statement but they sort of are now. Mixed socks. Because, y'know, I don't care. I just don't care. I'm just me.
LOL, so corny. I'm not sure anymore that I'll be able to pull of mixed socks.
Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy
#150the problem with this machine was that you have to setup the clothes properly within the machine for it to work. That defeats the whole purpose.
If you could just throw in a bunch of dirty clothes and let it do everything, that's a different story.