Engineers have created a robot that can sort clothes

The robot must sort out the randomly scribbled clothes and sort it into appropriate boxes.

Back in 1956, in Heinlein’s novel “Door to Summer”, the main character, an engineer, single-handedly designed and assembled a robot who knew how to do the main chores. However, Heinlein was generally optimistic about the future of engineering - his projects, from assembling a space rocket in the garage, to the colonization of the moon in the 20th century, are far from being realized yet.

But dreams have remained. Yes, the life of a modern person has become much easier with the advent of washing machines and dishwashers, vacuum cleaning robots, and even robots washing windows. But a bunch of homely routines still have to be handled. The robot will not dust the shelves, do not disassemble clean dishes from the dishwasher, and will not iron freshly washed clothes. It turned out to be extremely difficult to create a universal robot replacing a person. This is especially acute after moving from parents.
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Apparently, robotics engineer Gerardo Aragon Camarasa (Gerardo Aragon Camarasa) seems to have been working with this kind of work because, having completed an engineering school (ESIME) at the Mexican Polytechnic Institute (IPN), he moved to Glasgow, Scotland, to work hard on developing a robot, who can work with any clothes .

During the first three years of development, funded by the European Union, engineers from Scotland, Greece, Italy and the Czech Republic managed to create the first version of the robot, whose manipulators successfully cope with sorting and shifting various clothes.



To do this, the robot is equipped with two cameras that detect toilet objects in stereoscopic mode, a sensitive microphone that detects fabric “by ear” and feedback sensors that report on the softness of the fabric. Based on these inputs and complex algorithms, the robot, officially called CloPeMa (Clothes Perception and Manipulation, recognition and handling of clothes), and nicknamed for the appearance of the Blue Slick (Dextrous Blue), is controlled with clothes.

The robot has a database where the characteristics of items of clothing already known to it are recorded. If he encounters an unknown object, he tries to determine his characteristics on his own. In particular, conducting a microphone through the fabric, it determines its properties by sound, and with the help of pressure sensors it calculates its softness.

Manipulators of the two-handed robot are similar to those with which various specimens working in factories and plants are equipped. But those robots are controlled with hard and hard objects - and to work with the fabric requires a different approach.

“Try to fold your clothes yourself, using curling tongs with her,” explains Dr. Paul Sibert , one of the project’s leading programmers. “It's a damn hard task.”



Like Heinlein, Dr. Sibert shows unrestrained optimism, arguing that the descendants of this robot may appear as a home appliance in 10 years. So far, the finished version of such a device may come in handy at some textile factory.