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AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

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Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#151

Post by TeMPOraL »

oliwarner wrote: post #148
TeMPOraL wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Then again, given the horror stories I've heard about such agencies (exploiting and abusing old people and immigrants), if you're a human being with a conscience, you now have to vet the agency, which is a non-trivial task.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#152

Post by mdorazio »

eropple wrote: post #140
d--b wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy selling onions on the internet is not make a ton of money from it, though.

So? A more useful question is whether he makes enough . Growth-at-all-costs is toxic.

I really want to see his financials. He said that an unexpected $10K cost nearly ended the business and I got the sense from the article the margins are fairly slim after factoring everything in.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#153

Post by dmix »

netcan wrote: post #143

Lets 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.

I remember reading long ago that something like 70-90% of new startups are dead by the 7th year. It's not that big of a deal.

Edit: Small business rates are a bit better as startups require a bit more than just some revenue but some growth metrics. VC-backed companies fail at a pretty high rate (75% fail to return). https://fitsmallbusiness.com/small-business-failure-rates/

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#154

Post by andrewnc »

mdorazio wrote: post #152
eropple wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? A more useful question is whether he makes enough . Growth-at-all-costs is toxic.

I really want to see his financials. He said that an unexpected $10K cost nearly ended the business and I got the sense from the article the margins are fairly slim after factoring everything in.

AFAIK that was at the very beginning of the venture, maybe financials are more stable now.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#156

Post by JohnFen »

Even priced at $2,000, it would have been hard to justify for home use.

Folding laundry just isn't that hard or time-consuming. The one situation where I could see such a machine being justifiable is if you have a lot of laundry to fold -- but the speed of the device would seem to rule it out as a solution for that use case.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#157

Post by JohnFen »

bluGill wrote: post #135
oliwarner wrote: post #132

Earlier 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.

> If they do a $2k robot that finds my dirty clothing on the floor and puts clean clothing in the correct closet/draws

Yes -- priced properly, that would be a compelling product. But I'm guessing that's at least 20 years away.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#158

Post by JohnFen »

DanBC wrote: post #64
peter303 wrote: post #16

You have to admit the washing machine is one of wonders of the modern world, yet taken for granted. Until they were invented, a wife or servant essentially devoted most of a whole weekday to washing clothes. A washing machine and dryer cuts this to a couple hours a week. Clever people seek to cut this time even further.

But it turns out that washing machines didn't do much to save time. In the past people just didn't wash their clothes as often. Now people will wash their clothes after a single wear, and it's still mostly women who are doing the washing in families. https://twitter.com/TimHarford/status/1113123861602713600 https://twitter.com/DeconinckKoen/status/1054097445351776256

> But it turns out that washing machines didn't do much to save time.

Maybe not, but it has saved lives. Doing laundry by hand was hardcore and caused quite a lot of physical damage to people, including deaths.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#159

Post by JohnFen »

bunderbunder wrote: post #110
solarkraft wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still saved a ton of time in comparison to how clean our clothes are.

I wouldn't be surprised if it's balanced out by having to spend more time shopping for clothes because all those repeated trips through the washer and dryer wear them out more quickly. A while back we got fed up with our apartment's laundry facilities, and switched to one of those Haier portable washer units, drying on a clothesline, and washing less often. At this point I'm almost annoyed with how much longer my clo…

> all those repeated trips through the washer and dryer wear them out more quickly.

Particularly the drier. But I think most people use their driers wrong -- they want their clothes to be bone dry when they come out, and that's what causes the largest amount of wear and tear (all that lint in your lint trap is the result of damage to your clothing). Better to have the drier get the clothes almost, but not quite, completely dry.

Re: AI-powered laundry-folding robot company has filed for bankruptcy

#160

Post by JohnFen »

belorn wrote: post #90
DanBC wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, for many people "washing" is a euphemism for gathering clothing from various rooms, sorting it into different loads (hot wash, cool wash, whites and colours), loading the machine with clothing, loading detergent (and buying the detergent), pressing the button (while selecting a program that doesn't destroy the clothing), taking the clothing out of the machine and putting it in the dryer or hanging it on the cloth…

Almost every single step of those are optional depending on the people in the household. For us everyone is responsible to bring their clothes to the wash baskets and sort based on temperature. Very few modern clothing require cool wash, and in my household we don't own any. Very few white clothes and discoloration from washing whites with colors is so minimal with modern clothing/washing machines so we don't bother.…

> Almost every single step of those are optional depending on the people in the household.

Indeed.

I'm lazy, and as a result I select my clothing almost entirely with minimizing washing effort in mind. I tend to buy clothes that I don't need to sort out before washing, I buy most of my socks to be identical so I don't have to match them, I avoid clothes that require ironing to look even halfway presentable, and so forth.

Properly done, laziness can be an art form.

All that said, I do fold my clothes. For me, it's not that time-consuming or difficult.

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