Communications of the ACM
Researchers Create Robot That Can Pair, Fold Socks
The UC Berkeley robot can successfully handle malleable objects such as socks, and find and match a pair from a pile.
Credit: University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley researchers have developed a robot that can pair and fold socks. The effort to develop the sock-pairing robot is a continuation of research Berkeley professor Pieter Abbeel conducted earlier in creating a robot that could fold towels.
The new robot can determine whether a sock is inside out based on its texture, flipping it if necessary and pairing it with its match, Abbeel says. View a video of the UC Berkeley robot flipping and folding a pair of socks.
The ultimate goal is to create a robot that can perform useful tasks, he says. "One of the main challenges in bringing robots to our everyday environments is to enable them to deal with situations that are not identical each time the robot has to perform the task," Abbeel says.
From The Daily Californian
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