Laundry Sorting Robot

31 January 2023, by Valerie Bartel

Photo: Engin Akyurt

Hoping robotics will assist people in the future with house chores, I will look at doing laundry. One aspect is sorting clothes either by color or kind. The task can be split into the following parts: First finding the clothes, second picking them up, third deciding on what kind of clothing it is and last putting it into the right basket. To fulfill these steps, a robot needs to interact autonomously with non-rigid objects in a known environment

Robots can do unfavorable tasks for humans. When doing laundry, it usually needs to be sorted by color, material, and type. A robot that can sort laundry is a necessary step for having an autonomous setup that does the complete laundry chore.

The project in itself can be broken down into several parts. Each can be well defined on its own: Grasping clothes from a heap or basket, moving it in front of a camera, applying a classifier, and finally placing it in a predefined place accordingly. It is a good introduction to working with a robot and corresponding software.

During the project a Universal Robotics UR-5 or an Agile Robotics Diana 7 is used as hardware with ROS and MoveIT to move the robot. To process image date OpenCV is used as well as Open3D for the depth information.

Participants: Valerie Bartel