The industrial laundry industry is almost there on this. Here's Chicago Dryer's line.[1] They can take a huge clump of compressed sheets from a dryer and separate them out singly on a conveyor. But humans still grab them by an edge and start them into a slot for the ironing, folding and stacking process.<p>One last step to automate...<p>[1] <a href="https://www.chidry.com/products/cascade-automatic-linen-separating-system" rel="nofollow">https://www.chidry.com/products/cascade-automatic-linen-sepa...</a>
The video linked from the article [1] only shows a robot picking up an already packaged t-shirt.<p>They don't show what I assume is the more challenging part, which is to actually fold a t-shirt.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=h1_aZhmL5vw&feature=emb_logo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=h1_aZhmL5vw...</a>
The robots are standard pick and place robots using suction to pick <i>packaged</i> t-shirts and put them in a box. If you were expecting to see a robot picking up a t-shirt, folding it and putting it in a package you will be disappointed.
I found their new cashier system even more impressive. The cashier literally has to put everything on top of this plate and everything gets scanned at once. I hear the Uniqlo in Japan has this self checkout system that has this plus automatic bagging.
Most likely a coincidence but their founder resigned from Softbank's board recently. Softbank has a business in robotics.<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/uniqlo-founder-yanai-resigns-as-softbank-board-member-after-18-years.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/27/uniqlo-founder-yanai-resigns...</a>
PSA: I would pay upwards of $5000 for a robot that can reliably fold and put away laundry. I mean in a real bedroom, not some contrived setting, and real clothes that are not pre-sorted.