Robotic Iron that can remove wrinkles from your clothes

Scientists at Columbia University have developed a robot that can flawlessly iron clothes. Such was the achievement that the researchers came up with the name 'dynamic ironing' for when the robot was moving.  The robot uses sensors and a 'wrinkle analysis algorithm' to ensure shirts, trousers and other items come out looking as if they were ironed by a human.

According to daily mail U.K, the team from the University of Columbia admitted as much in their paper and said that they found it a 'very challenging task'. They managed it using two Xbox Kinetic motion sensors which allowed the robot iron to map out the garment before starting work using two special scans.

 

 The report said: 'The curvature scan can estimate the height deviation of the cloth surface, while the discontinuity scan can effectively detect sharp surface features, such as wrinkles. It then uses a 'wrinkle analysis algorithm' to ensure shirts, trousers and other items come out looking as if they were done by a human.

'We use this information to detect the regions that need to be pulled and extended before ironing, and the other regions where we want to detect wrinkles and apply ironing to remove the wrinkles.' Wrinkles were called 'height bumps' for the purposes of the research. They were dealt with in what was described as a 'optimized order', rather than randomly ironing the garment like some humans do. 

Professor Peter Allen, a computer scientist at Columbia and co-author of the paper, told Motherboard: 'Basically, we're just saying that if you have an object that doesn't have a rigid set of states, you must have a way to model it and deal with it, and what we were able to do is model these objects in a very nice way and figure it out.'

The report said: 'Experimental results show that using our wrinkle analysis algorithm, our robot is able to iron the cloth surface and effectively remove the wrinkles.' The researchers now plan to carry out further experiments involving how much force the robot should apply to make their results even better. The ironing robot is the latest instance where machines are taking over the jobs of people in the home.

Computers can now turned on your heating and alarm system remotely via an Internet connection. Siemens had come close to ironing clothes with a robot with the Dressman machine, which was the shape of the upper torso of a human body and ironed the shirt by blowing hot air into it. The findings are due to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm in May.

A German firm has made a bizarre contraption, called the Tubie, which it claims can dry and iron a shirt in just seven minutes. Users fix their clothes over an inflatable bag which is then filled with hot air, forcing crumples and creases out of shirts and trousers.