Yesterday I was talking about some ideas with my wife. The topic of robots came up. She rightly challenged me that these robots are not mostly about doing things that are not directly helping with daily items.I agree with her. Earlier this year, Melinda Gates wrote about the paucity of time in the Gates Notes annual letter.
Decades ago, the arrival of washing and drying machines liberated humankind (often more liberation to women) from the hard labor of washing and drying clothes. Now with 2 kids and 4 family members, we find that even the good old washers and dryers do not cut it. We need something more and it was talked about in the next 5 innovations please.
I wondered aloud, what if there was a loading and folding machine to automate and simplify the chore of washing and drying clothes. There is a lot written about how difficult it is to have robots to do finite movement with arms. What we take for granted – our hands – are nifty and wonderful. Hands can handle soft things. Hands can handle hard things. Hands can be flexible. Hands can be controlled with simple motor movements. And all these are hard for robots, unless we get fine grained motors and plenty of these per hand or per robot.
My wife and I started talking about folding clothes. On further digging, I found this interesting product called Foldimate (see here). They are on to something interesting. Despite the cool demo, it still will require the beings – us – humans, to unload and connect up the clothes the Foldimate machine. That said there is promise for better things to come.
With continued growth in technology and only limited time for us, further innovations are very welcome. So, hey robot, please help me with my daily chores …
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