Nobody likes folding laundry, but you really have to hate it to spend $7,999 on a robot that’ll fold it for you with a whole heap of limitations – including company employees getting the occasional peep at your tough-to-fold unmentionables.
Head over to Weave Robotics’ homepage and you’ll see videos of a Johnny 5-esque robot zipping around an apartment, putting things away and tidying up like a helpful robo-companion that really doesn’t want to be disassembled. That sort of autonomy is complicated, though, and Weave doesn’t actually sell such a product. Instead, it’s selling a wall outlet-powered variant that will only take care of a single chore. Meet Isaac 0, the laundry robot that costs as much as a first-class plane ticket from San Francisco to London.
“Laundry is a universal time sink that’s taken for granted to be human-only work simply because an alternative hasn’t existed,” Weave said in an announcement of Isaac 0’s availability this week. “It’s also a bounded task with measurable outcomes, and it makes for the perfect place to turn ambitious robotics research into a real product for the home.”
But its first commercial product suggests the year-and-a-half old startup’s ambitions outstrip reality. Isaac 0 has a lot of shortcomings.
For example, it can’t handle everything. Weave mentions “tshirts, long sleeves, sweaters, pants, [and] towels,” are in its wheelhouse, along with undergarments and pillowcases. Large blankets and bedsheets are currently out of its expertise, and the company said it’s constantly expanding its abilities. Even with that limited list, Isaac 0 still can’t do its job without plenty of mistakes.
“Because it’s an early, first-of-its-kind product Isaac 0 won’t be perfect all the time,” Weave admits. That lack of perfection means Isaac 0 needs a human to teleoperate the bot on occasion, the company said, in order to make a “5-10 second correction” before handing the task back off to the robot.
Don’t worry, though – Weave promises Isaac 0 will learn from every correction a human operator makes. Combined with weekly model updates, Weave claims “each fold is faster and higher quality than the last.”
To put “faster” in perspective, Weave said that Isaac 0 takes between 30 and 90 minutes to fold a load of laundry.
With its lack of advertised garment repertoire, Isaac 0’s teleoperators might be getting frequent peeks at garments not listed above, as well as the space they’re in, so be sure to position that massive, stationary laundry folding robot in a spot that won’t give it a peak at someone wondering where their favorite trousers ended up.
It’s not clear how often Isaac 0 will need to be teleoperated in a single folding session. The company’s website states that the goal is always for Isaac 0 to fold the whole batch without assistance, but the actual time a human has to spend assisting the bot can vary based on the mix of garments in a load. We asked Weave for more specifics, but didn’t hear back.
We do note that the announcement page mentions teleoperation “ensures that the final stage of the fold is neat,” suggesting the bot might regularly be monitored by a human to ensure it’s not leaving behind a pile of poorly-folded t-shirts and towels. According to Weave’s website, Isaac 0 teleoperators can see feeds from the bot’s head and wrists and all the degrees of freedom those cameras are afforded.
As for when home robot aficionados can expect a more capable, fully mobile version of Isaac like the one advertised on the company’s homepage, Weave didn’t specify, only noting in the announcement that “the next couple of years will set the foundation” for “the next generation of home robots.”
In other words, we seem to have a case of overpromise and underdeliver-a-robot-that-pretends-to-be-autonomous-but-is-partly-controlled-by-a-wage-slave on our hands.
For those still hard-pressed for a robotic alternative to folding laundry themselves like a peasant, Weave is now taking $250 reservations for an Isaac 0 today, but not if you live outside the San Francisco Bay Area – that’s the only place they’re being delivered right now, likely on account of the fact that the robots require extensive setup that can take a whole afternoon to complete.
Don’t want to pay the $7,999 full price? There’s also a $450/month subscription option for those looking for a pay-as-you-go way to be an early adopter. Weave said units are going to ship as soon as this month, and is also offering a $9,999 priority delivery option for those that want to jump the line. ®