Someone posted a video similar to this one of a this device which, as you can see, folds laundry.
The comments were things like "#lazy" and "First World Problems!"
It was frustrating. Here was a group of smart people (most people who used LinkedIn for social media seem to be pretty thoughtful usually) immediately thinking of how it wasn't relevant to them and declaring the product to be a bad idea and why we're in trouble in the prosperous countries because we can't even fold our own clothes.
I immediately thought of laundromats that offer "fluff-and-fold" service - you drop off laundry and they wash, dry and fold it and you pick it up later as well as hotels that will clean your clothes for you. This device in those settings may save some time and offer a consistent output. They might also prevent repetitive stress injuries. Why sell one to a household when you can sell 10, 100, 1000 at a time to a company?
I also thought about combining it with a conveyor belt or a bin that you can dump a lot of laundry into, or a bigger end receptacle where you can put a basket so all the clean laundry is folded and in a basket.
In looking for the video again, I discovered a few things... there's a company in Japan that made one a few years ago where you could dump in a whole basket. It took five hours to fold the load. And Panasonic had a device at CES that took up a whole wall. One part was a dresser. You take something out and wear it, then you throw it into another bin on the device and it washes, folds and puts it back in the dresser. It looked like something out of the Jetsons.
And I also learned that they actually are targeting households:
Lori also suggests that people probably derided the dishwasher in the early days, too.
Besides being a convenience, it's another reminder that the robots are coming for the jobs. But it's not something we should fear.
