article_snippet: But robotics engineers have now come up with what robotics engineers say is the best way to fold a variety of clothes into neat little rectangles.
article_snippet: It could be the ultimate home help - able to find your dirty clothes, wash your dirty clothes, and even fold your dirty clothes before neatly putting your dirty clothes away.
article_snippet: The robot developed by researchers at the University of California Berkeley is able to wash and fold clothes, recognise different items so different items can be folded neatly away.
article_snippet: Using Willow Garage's $280,000 Personal Robot 2, the researchers have been able to get the researchers to take washing out oa basket, place the researchers in a washer.
article_snippet: The robot developed by researchers at the University of California Berkeley is 'roughly the size of a person' and features two arms, claw-like 'gripper' hands, a front-facing screen head, and a tilting Hokuyo laser scanner that continuously flaps up and down like an ever-chattering mouth.
article_snippet: The researchers have now used The researchers findings to help develop a robot that is able to sort and fold laundry.
article_snippet: The researchers developed software that allowed the Willow Garage Personal Robot to grip clothes with claw like gripper hands and lay gripper hands out on a flat surface.
article_snippet: The researchers have written software that enables a robot to fold clothing into neat rectangles (shown above)
article_snippet: Using cameras and shape recognition software, the Willow Garage Personal Robot is able to recognise where folds should be made and use the Willow Garage Personal Robot grippers to perform The researchers.
article_snippet: The researchers found the Willow Garage Personal Robot was able to fold up to 40 different articles of clothing, including trousers, towels, sweaters and t-shirts.
article_snippet: For a t-shirt, for example, The researchers calculated the Willow Garage Personal Robot required just five folds, while a jumper requires seven folds.
article_snippet: Folding a towel might seem simple but for a robot a robot requires the ability to use some complex geometry .
article_snippet: Writing in a paper in a new journal on Household Robotic Services, The researchers said: 'The g-fold method worked reasonably well on pants. '
article_snippet: However Dr  Abbeel and Abbeel team said: 'While this study dealt explicitly with the task of laundry folding, we believe the tools put forth may generalize well beyond this to many deformable object manipulation challenges, such as ironing or bed-making. '
highlights_snippet: Engineers at University of California Berkeley conducted the work to help develop robots that can do the laundry .
  