Do you think robots are amazing or are you worried about the robots taking over the world? Why are we asking you this question? Because your answer would determine how you feel about the latest news that is circulating the media regarding robots; robots are now capable of ironing clothes all on their own.
The interesting fact? They are too good at this job, well, at least way better than you. Check out the crisp lines and the end result that speaks of a job well done. A paper is set for publishing at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics Automation in Stockholm. The paper has been written by a team of Columbia University researchers and describes how the team has improvised a robot that they have been working on for the past three years. The robot irons a shirt after analyzing the ridges, subtle in nature, in a garment that has been laid out and does by making use of two sensors created using Xbox Kinect.
The previous papers regarding ironing of clothes by robots were focused on how the robot would pick up a piece of clothing, ascertain what it is and then lay it out before it irons it. How did that happen? The robot was make use of a pre-computed simulation to cross-reference the garment’s movements and would then adjust its grip according to the conclusions.
So what twist did the Columbian team bring? The team has imparted the ability to handle unpredictable objects to this amazing robot as well, thus making its applications become more than just limited to laundromat.
Peter Allen, professor of Computer Science at Columbia and a co-author of the paper said, “Basically, we’re just saying that if you have an object that doesn’t have a rigid set of states, you have to have a way to model it and deal with is, and what we were able to do is model these objects in a very nice way and figure it out. You can think of working with ropes, and cable harnesses. Food production would also benefit from robots that can grasp soft objects on the fly.”
