
Automatic laundry folding - andreapaiola
https://www.foldimate.com/
======
MrQuincle
The cardboard box solution:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv7y2n0fOhw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv7y2n0fOhw)

The industrial solution:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKgHEz05lqw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKgHEz05lqw)

A black box that just as well can be Searle's chinese room:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7apeh4tjsgI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7apeh4tjsgI)

I think however the wrong thing is optimized here. I don't care about the
folding. I do care about the steaming. If I could steam it at home, that would
be awesome: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q-
iDj6U3M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q-iDj6U3M)

~~~
zdean
I've used this for years...no equipment required, the easiest way to fold
t-shirts and polos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbopCuN6TA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhbopCuN6TA)

------
chongli
This is not very impressive. I want to be able to dump an armload of clothes
hot out of the dryer into a hopper and forget about it. Having to sort and
hang the clothes on those clips (of which there don't appear to be very many)
is more than half the work!

~~~
dexterdog
Who has time to dump? The only dumping I want to do is the dumping of duty
laundry into the laundry input hole.

~~~
chongli
That would be the logical next step: integrated washing, drying, and folding.

~~~
dottedmag
There's a service for that: domestic worker. Pretty expensive nowadays though.

~~~
mason55
Standard wash and fold service is not that expensive, at least in NYC, and
usually they'll pick up and drop off for free.

------
koolba
From the FAQ, (emphasis mine):

> There is _less than a 1% chance_ that FoldiMate will do anything other than
> fold your laundry and treat your clothes.

Let's be generous and say that less than 1% means .5% chance. Assuming each
clothing fold is an independent event, that means if you fold 20 articles of
clothing then you have a 90% chance of not destroying one of them[1].

I like those odds!

[1]: (1 - .005)^20 = 0.90461048

~~~
wodenokoto
"anything other than fold your laundry and treat your clothes." != "destroy
clothes"

~~~
thearn4
Yeah I'm curious what the compliment of "fold your laundry and treat your
clothes" is.

Only thing we can say for sure is that it's "not fold your laundry or not
treat your clothes"

------
jolux
Is it just me or does this look very sketchy/like vaporware? They start off
clipping the shirts into those things and then they flip to a CGI render,
suggesting they don't even have a working prototype, and yet they're already
accepting "pre-orders." For a startup that was started in 2012 (and the
founder is listed as one of the seed investors) this seems like worryingly
little progress.

~~~
pfarnsworth
Yep. Another crowdsourcing/preordering scam. As I say for other things, if it
ever ships, I'll wait for the retail product and pay a bit more.

------
smt88
This looks like yet another crowdfunding vaporware. Their demo video is CGI,
and the release date is 2017.

~~~
andreapaiola
Crowfunding? Do you see the investors?

~~~
smt88
Pre-selling is still crowdfunding, even with investors. Take a look at Cinder,
as an example. They're YC-backed, crowd-funded, and are missing their promised
ship date by several months.

~~~
andreapaiola
Like Tesla? :D

~~~
smt88
Not at all like Tesla. There were commercial electric cars in the late 90s
before Tesla was even founded. They weren't inventing anything, they were
making it cheap enough for mass marketing.

They also didn't need pre-orders to deliver their first cars, and it hasn't
been a staple of survival. They're still around because they've raised absurd
amounts of VC (over $2B).

------
IgorPartola
Yeah, I hang up my clothes, so...

If you want to save a crapton of time on doing laundry, throw out all your
socks and buy the same kind. I standardized on UndeR Armor Resistor. Cheap,
last about a year, seem to stay in profuction forever. If every household
member does that, you never have to play the sock pairing game again.

~~~
Kluny
That's a great idea until you get into cases like:

light colored pants with low shoes (you need light socks)

dark colored pants with low shoes (you need dark socks)

running (you need thin socks with no seams)

hiking (you need hiking socks, or at least thicker ones, and probably two
pairs that you can wear at the same time, and multiple sets)

cycling (you can use the same ones you use for running, but your generic black
socks probably won't do it)

Only a heathen would wear the same socks in all of these circumstances.

~~~
IgorPartola
Matching socks to pants vs to shoes is its own debate, but that's why I picked
the socks I did: they are great for exercising, black in color, so go well
with jeans and also go well with my black and white Chucks.

I do have several pairs of specialty socks: a pair for dressy occasions, a
very thick woolen pair for extreme cold, and a couple of pairs of taller socks
for when I need the extra protection. That works just fine because I pull
those out roughly three times a year so there is very little matching to do.
Obviously, this is not the fashion forward thing to do, but I think for
working in a casual setting and meeting friends for a beer once in a while it
works just fine.

------
MetallicCloud
It doesn't really take very long to actually fold shirts and pants, most of
the time is spent on sorting. I would think in the amount of time it takes you
to properly clip a shirt onto the machine, you should easily have folded it
yourself.

~~~
JustUhThought
Maybe you don't do laundry for other people in your family. One of my chores
was laundry. For a family of 5. As a teenager, it was the pits. Anything to
shave 10 mins of my chores would have sounded like a great idea.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
As was mine. But when I think back, part of the major difficulty wasn't the
shirts and pants... it was the underwear and the socks. Those took some time.
But even then, this thing costs more than replacing the dryer, and I'd still
have had to carry the stuff out to the clothesline and back in the summer.

When I was even younger, however, my mother wanted nearly everything ironed.
If you are one of those sorts, the machine would be wonderful.

------
JustUhThought
There are already a, proportionally, lot of comments of the sort "this doesn't
save _that_ much time" or "folding doesn't take _that_ long".

Then, don't buy it. But to suggest that, in America, land of the Snuggie, The
Clapper, Feet Socks, and single serve automatic coffee brewers, come on. There
is a place in the market for something that makes doing laundry a little less
misserable.

~~~
mathgeek
> America, land of the Snuggie, The Clapper, Feet Socks, and single serve
> automatic coffee brewers, come on.

I think part of the equation is that none of those things cost $750. You could
spend tht much on a coffee brewer, but at that point you're getting into some
nice espresso machines.

------
hanniabu
While this is pretty interesting, the machine seems pretty bulky. I also
wonder how accurate you have to be with the way you hang up the clothes on
those clips. I'm sure if you're a little off the clothes won't last right. The
other drawback I notice is that it seems this only folds tops. Pretty pricey
and bulky for a one trick pony.

~~~
robalfonso
I get your point, but consider any household with higher income and you'll see
all kinds of specialty appliances. (Central vaccums, wine fridges, warming
drawers) so a dedicated folding machine would fit right in.

To your point about tops, if you watch the video I could see it being capable
to do pants, you may have to fold them over once when you hang them.

~~~
emdowling
Hold up. A wine fridge is not in the same category as this. A wine fridge is a
necessity.

~~~
gsmethells
I concur, wine fridges are totally a necessity!

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
I pity the savages who lack such basics.

------
sundvor

      > We start with a neat, professionally looking fold 
      > * More methods will be available via FoldiMate’s “internet store”
    

That's potentially interesting; are we basically talking about software
unlocking of capabilities here, i.e. like Tesla's autopilot?

~~~
stephengillie
I think they're planning an app store. Got an app for folding dresses?

~~~
sundvor
I was thinking something like Folding @ home.

(Sorry, couldn't resist).

------
organsnyder
If someone could create a machine that actually put the laundry away, we'd get
one (or at least covet one) in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, for our family of
five, the folding part of the operation really isn't where most of the labor
is.

------
dominotw
I always used 'laundry folding' as a counterexample for fears of automation.
This clumsy machine is case is point that pervasive automation is far far far
away.

~~~
smt88
It really depends on the task.

Driving seems much more complicated than folding, but driving is nearly
solved, while folding is still difficult due to the complexity of recognizing
non-standard shapes and figuring out how to manipulate them.

Driving is a huge job market in the US, so the automation apocalypse for low-
income Americans is on its way. I'm not sure what else on farms will be
automated, but it's certainly being worked on. I imagine fast food a lot of
retail is also going to be more automated. One example is grocery stores: they
used to have 5-10 cashiers working at a time, and now they have 0-2 (due to
self checkout). Grocery delivery will eat into those jobs even more.

~~~
dominotw
> but driving is nearly solved, while folding is still difficult due to the
> complexity of recognizing non-standard shapes and figuring out how to
> manipulate them.

but doesn't driving have even more ambiguity and a million times more complex(
not to mention dangerous) than folding laundry ?.Are you saying it has been
solved due to economic incentives ?

~~~
smt88
These exact problems have been discussed several times, sometimes in the same
article, because of how surprising this is to people. I was really surprised
when I first learned it, too.

Here's an example of some discussion: [http://hackaday.com/2016/02/24/the-
challenges-of-a-laundry-f...](http://hackaday.com/2016/02/24/the-challenges-
of-a-laundry-folding-robot/)

------
imeron
There's also Laundroid announced last year that can supposedly fold your
clothes without hanging it first.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7apeh4tjsgI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7apeh4tjsgI)

------
salemh
This isn't satire? I thought I'd come to the comments to see comments about
it.

It's a real potential product? The WSJ reviews like "I'm going to save up for
the FoldiMate! That's what I am waiting for." is REAL?

...

~~~
folktheory
According to US government, women spend 16 minutes a day, on average, doing
laundry, and men spend 4 minutes on average. That's over a 100 hours a year
for women, so yes, there is probably a lot of demand for a technology that
makes this faster.

~~~
salemh
I can see this in a commercial setting, but any family/household that wants to
drop $600+ dollars on a folding appliance, may be better served with a $30+ /
week maid, who also does the folding.

How does one justify $600+ on saving 16 min a day? How does one sell this to
any consumer with a >$100,000 income to a household?

------
huherto
If we solved self driving. It may be possible to place all your clothes on a
tote and have a robot pick all your clothes and take them to an automated
washing, drying, ironing and folding facility.

~~~
zach
Before that point, laundry service is a great candidate for automobile trunk
pickup and delivery. Just put your stinkables in a trunk box, have them
removed at some point in the day, then your clean, folded clothes are
delivered to your trunk the next day. It just happens, like a laundry fairy.

The problem right now is that trunk pickup and delivery is not really an
expected use case. Cars aren't really designed to support delivery
drivers/automation being able to open your trunk and only your trunk,
especially without a key.

But it could be something that can be retrofitted decently, thanks to US-
mandated inside trunk releases. And at the high end, limited-entry trunk
delivery is already being tested in some places:
[http://www.wired.com/2015/04/delivery-drivers-can-now-
leave-...](http://www.wired.com/2015/04/delivery-drivers-can-now-leave-
packages-parked-audi/)

------
coderKen
and we are wondering why a lot of Americans are obese. Simple tasks like these
help burn a few calories.

~~~
throwawaysocks
What?! Do you fold your clothes? It burns about as many calories as watching
TV and picking up the remote on commercial breaks...

Folding a week of laundry for 3 people takes about an hour. Reclaiming that
time and doing _actual_ exercise instead would work miracles.

