Take for instance ironing and folding ones clothing and garments as an example that many of us need to complete on a regular basis, how many of us would dearly love to pass this chore over to a programmed mechanical rattler. Well we may be in luck, researchers at UC Berkeley recently used Willow Garage's PR2 two-armed mobile robotic platform to fold towels. The video here shows a robot successfully folding and sorting towels into separate groups and moving between one table to another.
I do like how the robot takes its time when meticulously examining each towel, except one has to keep in mind that the video is shown at 50X speed. It’s elegant in its simplicity, complex in its visual recognition, and fun to watch !
The open source project was led by UC Berkeley Ph.D. student Jeremy Maitin-Shepard working with Professor Pieter Abbeel.
