A few companies have tried their hands at making robots that can fold laundry. Seven Dreams was one of them. The Japanese company was backed by major companies like Panasonic and Daiwa House. It created Laundroid, a laundry-folding robot that used artificial intelligence to ascertain the best way to fold an article of clothing. The $16,000 machine never made it to market and the company has gone bankrupt in the process.
Seven Dreamers confirmed on its website that it’s in the process of selling and transferring the business. Its product, the Laundroid, used multiple cameras and robotic arms to first scan a load of laundry. It would then use Wi-Fi to connect to a server in order to analyze the clothing with artificial intelligence. This was done to figure out the best way to fold the clothes.
There was also supposed to be a companion app which would have tracked every piece of clothing to go through the machine and categorized it by each member of the household. The company said that Laundroid could fold a load of laundry in a couple of hours. Seven Dreamers had planned to eventually bring down the cost of the machine from $16,000 to $2,000 which would have made it a likely purchase for more customers.
However, the company took on $20 million in debt trying to make that happen. The rest, as they say, is now history.
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