A robot that can pick up several bits of clothing at once from a pile strewn across the floor could be used to help tidy messy bedrooms.
Picking up piles of clothes and grasping multiple items simultaneously may be straightforward for a human, but actions such as working out where the clothes鈥� edges are and how to group them together pose problems for a robot.
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at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have developed a robot system to address what they call the 鈥渢eenager鈥檚 problem鈥� of how to most efficiently pick up strewn clothes. It uses cameras and a clothes-recognising artificial intelligence to minimise the number of trips to the laundry basket necessary to clean a room.
The researchers tried two approaches in conjunction with the AI, one using a depth-perception camera and another using a standard colour camera, to help it sort out a pile of 10 articles of clothing including socks, T-shirts and shorts.
Once the robot finished putting the items in the bin, it could tip them out and start the task again, learning without human supervision. It went through the process more than 200 times, grabbing more than 2000 garments.
After comparing the two approaches, Goldberg and his team combined them. They also programmed the robot to perform tidying movements on the ground before it picked up the clothes. They found that their AI-enhanced system was nearly 70 per cent more efficient than a robot that just grasps random items of clothing one by one.
The robot required fewer trips to the laundry bin when working like this. However, it had to do more work on the ground, such as moving clothes together, before it could pick them up.
It isn鈥檛 as fast or efficient as a person, who could probably pick up all 10 items at once. But it is more efficient than other robot grippers, and the field is progressing rapidly.
鈥淚 believe that we鈥檙e going to see this become practical within the next decade,鈥� says Goldberg. 鈥淎 robot system that will maybe be on the order of a few thousand dollars, like a Roomba but with an arm, will be able to basically rove around in a home and just keep the floors clean.鈥�
It is good progress on automating the problem of cleaning clothes off the floor, but it doesn鈥檛 yet address how to sort clothes after they have been picked up, which humans can easily do, says at the University of the West of England.
Using a pair of robot arms instead of just one could improve efficiency, says Pipe. However, it can be difficult to coordinate the force between two arms, so the robot might end up accidentally ripping a T-shirt, he says.
arXiv
