I maintain that whoever invents a robust laundry folding robot will be a trillionaire. In that, I dump jumbled clean clothes straight from a dryer at it and out comes folded and sorted clothes (and those loner socks). I know we're getting close, but I also know we're not there yet.
We are certainly getting close! In 2010, watching PR2 fold some unseen towels is similar to watching paint dry [1], but we can now enjoy robots attain lazy student-level laundry folding in real-time, as demonstrated by π₀[2].
I can live without folding laundry (I can just shove my undershirts in the closet, who cares if it's not folded), but whoever manufactures a reliable auto-loading dishwasher will have my dollars. Like, just put all your dishes in the sink and let the machine handle them.
But if your dishwasher is empty is takes nearly the same amount of time/effort to put dishes straight into the dishwasher that it does to put them in the sink.
I think I'd only really save time by having a robot that could unload my dishwasher and put up the clean dishes.
That's called a second dishwasher: one is for taking out, the other for putting in. When the latter is full, turn it on, dirty dishes wait outside until the cycle finishes, when the dishwashers switch roles.
I thought about this and it gets even better. You do not really need shelves as you just use the clean dishwasher as the storage place. I honestly don’t know why this is not a thing in big or wealthy homes.
Hmm, that doesn't match my experience. It takes me a lot more time to put dishes into the dishwasher, because it has different places for cutlery, bowls, dishes, and so on, and of course the existing structure never matches my bowls' size perfectly so I have to play tetris or run it with only 2/3 filled (which will cause me to waste more time as I have to do dishes again sooner).
And that's before we get to bits of sticky rice left on bowls, which somehow dishwashers never scrape off clean. YMMV.
1. Get a set of dishes that does fit nicely together in the dishwasher.
2. Start with a cold prewash, preferably with a little powder in there too. This massively helps with stubborn stuff. This one is annoying though because you might have to come back and switch it on after the prewash. A good job for the robot butler.
Why can't dishwashers just be small, single-dish appliances in which you put the plate/mug/wine glass/forks/whatever, close it, push a button, and 10 seconds later it's clean and dry, you unload and repeat?
At this point I'm not sure we'll actually get a task-specific machine for laundry folding/sorting before humanoid robots gain the capability to do it well enough.
Foldimate has gone bankrupt in 2021 [1], and the domain referral from foldimate.com to a 404 page at miele.com, suggests that it was Miele who bought up the remains, not a sketchy company with a ".website" top-level domain.
