Among household chores, doing laundry is my least favorite. I don’t mind loading clothes into the washer then transferring them to the dryer; it’s the folding that irks me. If you’re in the same boat I am, a California-based startup by the name of FoldiMate may have the solution you’ve been yearning for.
FoldiMate has developed a robotic clothes-folding machine that promises to fold shirts, pants and towels twice as fast as a human. The device can even de-wrinkle clothing using steam and infuse them with scents or fabric softeners but there’s a good bit of manual interaction required as well.
Users will have to clip each garment to the machine manually. What’s more, it won’t be able to handle oversized items like bed sheets or smaller articles such as underwear and socks. Once complete, the machine dispenses folded clothing into a tray that can accommodate up to 30 items depending on fabric thickness.
Folding laundry seems like a simple (albeit mundane) task but as The Wall Street Journal points out, it’s quite complicated seeing as it requires both dexterity and problem- solving (matching socks, turning garments inside-out and so on).
The company plans to begin accepting pre-orders next year with a target price between $700 and $800. That’s no small chunk of change but for those that absolutely hate laundry and see this as a long-term investment, it may be worth it. More than 62,000 people have already registered to be notified when pre-orders begin meaning at the very least, there's some interest.
I might be a player if priced a bit lower but given its limitations and the amount of manual labor that still needs to be done to make it work, I’ll sit this one out.
https://www.techspot.com/news/65134-800-dollar-laundry-folding-robot.html
