Researchers in the United States have created a robot that folds laundry. While not the first of its kind, it is 5-10 times faster than systems from previous work in this area.
Soon the end of the laundry folding chore? Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have created a robot capable of performing this surprisingly complex task, and much faster than any other similar robot. They named their system SpeedFolding.
In their article which will be presented at the IROS2022 robotics conference in Kyoto (Japan) next week, they detail how their creation works and the obstacles encountered. The system is composed of an ABB YuMi robot, with two articulated arms each equipped with a gripper, it is managed by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) equipped with a bimanual manipulation neural network (BiMaMa-Net). The AI was trained on a set of 4,300 actions annotated by a human or assisted by a robot.
Demonstration of the SpeedFolding robot which manages to lay a garment flat and fold it according to a predefined pattern. ©UC Berkeley
A robot that can fold 40 garments per hour
The robot is able to fold a garment in less than 120 seconds on average, or 30 to 40 folds per hour. Compared to a human being, it’s still quite slow. However, until now the record was 3 to 6 bendings per hour. That’s up to 20 minutes to fold a single garment… SpeedFolding starts by laying the garment flat, then folds it according to a predefined pattern.
His success rate is 93%, and he even manages to correctly fold clothes that are a different color, shape, or stiffness than seen during training. However, we should not expect a commercialized product for the moment. Robotic arms cost tens of thousands of dollars. Let’s hope that the artificial intelligence developed by the researchers will allow the creation of a new robot specifically designed for this task at more accessible prices.
