The laundry robot you've always wanted is coming next year

The world's first laundry sorting and folding robot will go on sale in 2017, its manufacturer said on Tuesday at the Ceatec electronics show just outside of Tokyo.

Laundroid is the size of a large refrigerator and has a pull-out drawer near its base where unsorted clothes can be thrown in. A robot inside the device picks up each item of clothing and uses image analysis with artificial intelligence to figure out what kind of clothing it is so it knows the correct way to fold it.

For humans, identifying and folding laundry is an easy albeit mundane task, but for a machine it's very difficult. That's reflected in the size of the device and its speed. During a demonstration on Tuesday it took about 10 minutes to pick out one garment, identify it and fold it. Some garments will take longer.

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