Folding clothes has been a house chore that has been left remarkably intact despite all the technological evolution and revolutions we had in the past 100 years. FoldiMate proposes a clothes folder which can fold select items perfectly within ~10 seconds. The company plans to sell it for less than $1000.
At CES, FoldiMate founder and CEO Gal Rozov shows us a demo and gives important details about this product. The robotic folder is about 3 feet tall and takes dry clothes from the top. As you can see in the video below, the user has to input the clothing items in a certain way as they will be “rolled” into the machine, like paper would in a printer or a scanner.
FoldiMate can fold shirts, pants, pillow cases and towels now. We’ve been told that the system currently works in the lab at the company’s HQ, but the model shown at CES Unveiled is a more of concept to show how the final system would work from a user standpoint.
Folding clothes is a complicated problem because of the immense variety of shapes and sizes that can challenge any folding system. In the past few years, some players have emerged, and one more the famous ones is Laundroid.
FoldiMate and Laundroid have different philosophies. Foldimate requires the user to be around to feed the system, and it is basically a folding accelerator. You still have to spend time, but hopefully less so.
Laundroid is a “fire and forget” system where you are supposed to throw the clothes in the machine and go away. The folding is much slower, but it doesn’t take any of your time. Laundroid has inked a partnership to build a combo washer/dryer/folder that could make the whole process even care-free.
But the price is a huge factor as well. FoldiMate will cost less than $1000, while Laundroid is accepting orders at $16,000. Over time, prices will eventually decrease, but it’s not going to happen overnight.
Filed in . Read more about CES, CES 2018 and Social Hit.