Laundroid
2015 - 2019, 4 years old
A cabinet-sized robot from Japan's Seven Dreamers that used cameras and AI to fold laundry, priced around $16,000 and never shipped a unit.
Seven Dreamers Laboratories spent years showing the Laundroid at CES, a wardrobe-sized machine that used cameras, AI, and robotic arms to pick up, recognize, and fold arbitrary garments, with a planned price around 16,000 dollars. Folding a random shirt turned out to be one of those tasks that is trivial for a person and brutal for a robot, and the company never shipped a single unit. It raised roughly 10 billion yen, about 89 million dollars, from backers including Panasonic and Daiwa House before the money ran out. On April 23, 2019, Seven Dreamers filed for bankruptcy with about 2.2 billion yen in debt and retreated to its older business making nasal-breathing devices. The most expensive way ever devised to fold a towel was itself folded up.
- Founded
- 2015-10
- Shut down
- 2019-04-23
- Funding raised
- $89M
- Years alive
- 4
- Founders
- Shin Sakane
Sources
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