No rest for the wicked as Californian startup Watney Robotics showcases robots folding towels non-stop.
A video shared on social media shows two Watney robots, which are designed for household chores and menial labor, folding hundreds of pinstriped towels in what seems to be a never-ending stream of fresh laundry.
The San Francisco-based company notes that these robots are teleoperated, which usually means that someone is controlling them remotely. In this case, from thousands of miles away, according to Watney’s post on X titled “fold, fold, fold” in all caps.
“An overnight timelapse of one of our live deployments teleoperated from over 7000 miles away. Our robots fold 24/7/365 with no human intervention, handling long-tail edge cases with no downtime,” it read.
FOLD! FOLD! FOLD!
undefined Watney Robotics (@watneyrobotics) November 25, 2024
An overnight timelapse of one of our live deployments teleoperated from over 7000 miles away. Our robots fold 24/7/365 with no human intervention, handling long-tail edge cases with no downtime. pic.twitter.com/pZa5K4CTWn
This sparked questions in the comments section, with users pointing out apparent contradictions between the claims of teleoperation and no human intervention. One user also noted a robot charging in the video, suggesting this constituted “downtime” and challenging another claim made in the now-viral post.
Cybernews has reached out to Watney Robotics for clarifications.
Folding is a notoriously complex task for robots and is sometimes considered to be a benchmark for machine capabilities. Even those that were shown to fold clothes with human supervision, including Tesla’s Optimus bot, did so at a glacial pace.
It is still a remarkable achievement, with Watney saying that “teleoperation is hard,” while “teleoperation with high packet loss, variable latency, and constrained bandwidth is almost impossible.”
“We built our system from the ground up (in Rust) to perform dynamic tasks with unprecedented dexterity in real world environments,” the company said.
It also claimed to have built the world’s largest dataset of “cloth manipulation” in a real-world environment, which could mean a big step towards true autonomy.
Aside from folding laundry, Watney robots can be used for janitorial tasks, such as cleaning floors and wiping windows, as well as on-site logistics, including transporting heavy loads and restocking supplies.
They can also serve as personal assistants, handling grocery shopping, deliveries, and other errands, according to the startup’s website.
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