Laundroid, the Laundry-Folding Robot, Is Your New Favorite Time-Saving Invention

It’s difficult enough finding time to do that stuff around the house that just needs to be done. (We’re looking at you, stack o’ dishes.) Thankfully, modern technology has made it easier for us to set-it-and-forget-it with dishwashers and Roombas. But what about that pesky hamper bursting with clothes? Well, thanks to some heroes engineers in Japan, the world now has the first-ever laundry-folding robot: Laundroid.

Just revealed at the Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies (CEATEC), Laundroid is the brainchild of some of Japan’s largest companies, including Panasonic, Daiwa House, and Seven Dreamers. Fun fact: Seven Dreamers estimates that the average person spends 9,000 hours on laundry over the course of a lifetime, and we can think of 9,000 other things we’d rather do.

At CEATEC, Laundroid wowed the crowd by taking a t-shirt, analyzing it, and working some magic on it. Within a few minutes, the shirt was folded perfectly. (It sounds like a whole load will take up to seven hours in total.) While it’s unlikely that it takes you that long to fold a bunch of clothes by yourself, the idea is that you could put a whole load of clothes in right before bedtime and wake up with your work outfit ready to throw on.

Just feed your wardrobe into Laundroid’s hatch, and the machine will figure out what kind of clothing each piece is and get to folding. No more spending precious brunch time on folding your shirts, shorts, pants, skirts, and towels. Laundroid’s image analysis will determine which movements are needed to fold each item according to its specifications.

We’ll let Laundroid take it away.

Now, before you totally forget about your basket full of clean, unfolded clothes, you should know that it’ll be a hot minute before our favorite new invention hits the shelves. The official version of Laundroid is set to make all your laundry-related dreams come true in 2019, with a unit that will do the whole shebang for you: wash, dry, and fold. All you’ll need to do is remember to sort your stuff before washing and take out any errant red socks so you don’t end up with a wardrobe like Dolores Umbridge.

According to CNET, the ultimate goal of Laundroid’s creators is to manufacture a system that will do the laundry trifecta (wash, dry, fold) and put your stuff away. So the only other thing we need is Cher Horowitz’s wardrobe selector from Clueless, and the future closet of our dreams will be a reality. (All of that will probably cost more than everything inside the closet, but it’s good to have goals, right?)

Folks will be able to pre-order their Laundroid in 2016 and beta models will go out shortly after, but it looks like the focus in the immediate future will be on how the machine works for commercial use. No word on how much the home version will cost, but we’ll start saving our quarters now.