Laundry Folding Robot Just Wants to Help

Roboticists at The University of California, Berkeley have developed a robot that can fold towels.  Very slowly.  And, somehow, in a sort of earnest and endearing way?  I think it’s the careful smoothing of creases that does it.  I shall call it FOLD-E.

In the first video, the robot folds and stacks four towels that have been randomly dropped on a table for it.  Its creators say that it achieved “success on all 50 out of 50 single-towel trials as well as on a pile of 5 towels.”  In the second video, some mean person has given it an already folded towel to fold, which only serves to confuse it.

(via Geekologie.)

Have a tip we should know? tips@themarysue.com

Author

Close

Susana Polo

Susana Polo thought she'd get her Creative Writing degree from Oberlin, work a crap job, and fake it until she made it into comics. Instead she stumbled into a great job: founding and running this very website (she's Editor at Large now, very fancy). She's spoken at events like Geek Girl Con, New York Comic Con, and Comic Book City Con, wants to get a Batwoman tattoo and write a graphic novel, and one of her canine teeth is in backwards.

twitter