TL;DR: The recent “Clothes Folding Robot” was human-controlled. Its not autonomous at all.
Even human controlled, (which they state in the video that it is not an autonomous demo). The point of what they were showing was the dexterity. Folding laundry is a difficult task and it seems like the mechanics are able to pick up and work with the fabric pretty effortlessly which is important. If they can thread a needle (again even remote controlled) that would be a big leap for the mechanical part of robotics… I feel the need to point out that I wouldn’t piss on Elon if he were on fire… but for what this is it is an interesting demo.
Human-controlled mechanical dexterity of that level and much higher has been around for decades, the da Vinci Surgical System was cleared for use by the FDA in 2000. This is just some huckster tricking investors with a mechanical turk, it’s exactly one notch more sophisticated than hitting somebody with a pipe and taking their Jordans.
The point of what they were showing was the dexterity. Folding laundry is a difficult task and it seems like the mechanics are able to pick up and work with the fabric pretty effortlessly which is important.
We literally have robots that align and process 3um (micrometer) solder balls, and so forth through a mechanism called “Advanced Packaging”.
Computers have been far more dexterous than Humans since basically the invention of… well… everything mechanical ever. I mean hell, I got a $300 laser-jet printer in my house. Do you think you’ve got the dexterity to deposit 300-dots-per-inch like my printer does?
Lemme show you something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyN-CRNrb3E
This is called the triple-inverted pendulum. Do you think any human finger or arm is dexterous enough to triple-balance this pendulum on top of each other like the robot can? This is the sorts of stuff that a typical Masters of Control Theory student can build 15 years ago with a typical engineering degree. I don’t know how much better control theory has gotten in the past decade, but erm… computers are absurdly precise today. Far far more precise than any human, even 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.
EDIT: Folding laundry is difficult for planning issues IIRC. Its difficult to visualize where cloth will move when you apply different forces to a piece of cloth. Humans are absurdly good with simulating / imagining how the cloth will fold. But at no point during the exercise is anything a dexterity challenge.
Thank you for pointing this out. There is no achievement here, just a poor copy.
The people that work for him make some neat stuff no question.