Berkeley Gets PR2 Robot To Fold Clothes
The day of robots helping out with household chores is drawing nearer. That could help reduce some unhappiness when the guys slouch in the couch watching sports program while the wives slog hard in the kitchen.
UC Berkeley researchers have started using Willow Garage’s PR2 robot to fold towels. The robot adopts innovative visual scanning techniques, allowing it to pick up a towel, find the corners, and fold the towel on a table perfectly.
According to the paper presented at the 2010 ICRA (PDF), the robot successfully completed 50 out of 50 attempts to fold a single towel, and also folded 5 out of 5 towels when they were presented in a group.
Is watching a robot do laundry really that exciting? Hell yes — wait until you see the video! UC Berkeley used a Willow Garage robot to develop their own sophisticated robotics program. That validates the whole premise of the PR2 — faster development by letting researchers use a common platform. Score one for open source robotics!”
By the way, Willow Garage is giving away 10 of these robots for free! This is a great time to watch how bots are going to evolve to take on a larger role in our lives. UCB has already benefitted with a a cool and novel application. The next few years are going to be amazing in terms of personal robotics development.
Paul is a geek who shares his thoughts on technology, gadgets, social networks and football in this blog. Stay in touch with his updates by subscribing to the RSS feeds or Email. Thanks for visiting Seventoten and leaving a comment. To change this standard text, you have to enter some information about your self in the Dashboard -> Users -> Your Profile box. 
