Robotics do housework

The robot with the name PR2 folded the towel quite well, but it took 25 minutes to fold one.

The slow-folding movements of PR2 are groundbreaking achievements in the field of robotics.Photo: scientias.nl.

Historically robots have been built to perform complex and repetitive tasks - such as automobile assembly. All of the things they handle in the process are identical in shape and size.

One of the biggest challenges of robotics experts is to design robots that can handle objects they have never seen before. Telegraph said, after a research process, engineers and scientists from the University of California, USA have successfully built PR2 - robots capable of learning how to handle all objects. They create a software to help robots achieve that ability.

In a recent test, experts for PR2 classified the towels with different sizes, colors and materials. A video on the Youtube page shows that PR2 is skillful in sorting and folding towels. According to Telegraph, because robots need nearly 25 minutes to fold a towel, one must increase the speed of the video up to 50 times to make the viewer feel normal.

PR2 picks up each towel with one hand and then moves the towel to the other. Its two high-resolution cameras scan the cloth to identify the shape. After finding two adjacent corners of the towel, the robot placed a towel on the table and began folding. Finally he smoothed the towel with both hands.

Perhaps the housewives don't feel impressed with the folding method of PR2, but its slow manipulation is really a breakthrough achievement in the field of robotics.

"Distorted objects cause a lot of problems in the field of robotics and computer science," Telegraph quoted Professor Pieter Abbeel, a computer science expert in the research group.

The results of other tests for PR2 will be announced at the International Robot and Automation Conference in Anchorage City, Alaska, USA next month.

The PR2 robot video folds the towel up 50 times: