

Robot that autonomously folds a pile of towels - jorgeortiz85
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5g33S0Gzo

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pufuwozu
I just want to point out that the robot's operating system is open-source and
runs on heaps of different robot platforms:

<http://www.ros.org/>

The software is primary developed by Willow Garage, a start-up created by an
ex-Googler that also has Larry Page on its board:

<http://www.willowgarage.com/>

You can actually simulate this specific robot and even write algorithms (in
Python and C++ AFIAK) without having one:

<http://www.ros.org/wiki/pr2_simulator>

As you can probably tell, I really love how they're lowering the entry barrier
for robotics programming!

~~~
Groxx
That's pretty frickin' awesome... ideal for algorithm experimenting, and it
could even help create a better-designed 'bot because you can experiment with
different placements of tools.

Many thanks for the links! I'm definitely keeping those around...

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jorgeortiz85
When I was briefly involved in doing research as an undergrad, Pieter Abbeel
(the Berkeley professor behind this robot) was my grad student advisor. Back
then I was just trying to pick up dry-erase markers off a table, and even that
was extraordinarily difficult to do. To me, this video is nothing short of
mind-blowing.

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invisible
It's so astonishing that what takes this robot over an hour and a half to do
can be processed by our brains in a fraction of a second. I am looking forward
to being witness to the tightening of that gap.

~~~
nzmsv
They are using just a single GPU (from the paper). So the robot can actually
be sped up even today. Still nowhere near human pattern recognition though.

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mkramlich
This illustrates an important way of staying competitive globally:

You don't want to be the country where people fold towels.

You want to be the country that designs & builds robots that fold towels.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Yes. In 20 or 30 years when a robot can actually fold a towel as quickly as a
human, those towel-folding economies are going to be in trouble. ;)

~~~
indrax
More like 2 or 3 years. The singularity is at hand.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
The singularity has been due Real Soon Now for a looooong time.

~~~
indrax
Well, let's revisit the state of the art in towel folding in 5 years.

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jorgeortiz85
Here's the published paper [PDF]:
[http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/papers/Maitin-
ShepardCus...](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~pabbeel/papers/Maitin-
ShepardCusumano-TownerLeiAbbeel_ICRA2010.pdf)

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mkramlich
A brain the size of a planet and all you people have me doing is folding
towels. - MtPA

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noonespecial
Anyone who's ever worked retail on the fitting-room -> shelf/hanger treadmill
is now thinking feverish thoughts...

Edit: Oh. Swing and miss! Feverish was the wrong word. I was not at all
implying that this is a "teh robots took our yooobbss" scenario, rather, as
someone who has folded and restocked many shirts, I'm excited about the
prospect that this kind of drudgework could be spared us by robots.

Philosophically, I think this is a very good thing. Sure robots do more
important things than fold shirts, but this kind of AI is an important baby
step to a much better world for people.

~~~
cianestro
People have had to fold their own textiles for as long as they have had shame.
The more abundant technology is, and indeed any resource, the more we can free
up the greatest of all resources--the human mind. Great comments noonespecial.

btw: "mahmud," the robot can do whatever it's programmed to do, not just fold
clothing ;)

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mahmud
Every afternoon, I 'waste' 15 minutes of company time, leaving my desk as a
highly paid software developer to do the dishes in the sink. No one told me to
do it, we have a cleaning crew that comes at night, but I do it because it
frees my mind -- the greatest of all resources.

Not all chores are "chores". Sometimes we just enjoy doing boring stuff.

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aufreak3
The robot is, true to its species description to date, robotic. It is
performing the exact same sequence of operations - almost like first trying to
generate a 3D model of the towel (the spin) followed by some cross checks (the
twists) and then proceeds to fold it. It looks like there is no learning
apparent from one towel fold to the next, which would be thoroughly
fascinating if it were done in even the littlest of tasks simpler than towel
folding.

~~~
aufreak3
For comparison, checkout Rodney Brook's robot "Domo" -
<http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/currentrobots.html>

~~~
Devilboy
Wow that is incredible

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Dellort
If it just looked a little better I would marry it. I guess this will be
replacing women sooner that we can imagine.

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detcader
My first reaction: How much time and money did this cost? How is this
benefiting anything? Is this a test of some operating system that will be used
on other, more useful things, or just a science project?

~~~
detcader
I'm just saying, I don't see how this is efficient outside of "can we make a
robot that folds towels?" Sure, it's pretty cool, even putting aside its
slowness, but it seems like a lot of effort towards something with little
application. When you're just /learning/ robotics you're supposed to
experiment and make useless stuff, but this seems like a professional project.

I guess I'm not familiar with the whole world of robots-- maybe this stuff is
normal and fine I'm thinking too much at 3 AM..

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waterlesscloud
The robot is picking up an object with a deformable geometry, analyzing that
geometry, and then using that data to manipulate that geometry in a desired
fashion. It does this with a series of objects of different sizes, shapes, and
colorations. It was presumably not familiar with these particular objects
ahead of time.

There's a lot going on here, and it's valuable to have done it.

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mhb
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1235994>

~~~
jpwagner
thanks for this link to another HN page involving the exact same video with
zero discussion on it.

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kijuhygfhjk
Since this was a male CS Phd student presumably the real research was
discovering that towels:

a, needed folding

b, needed washing occasionally so they could be folded

