Weird Japanese Robot Does Laundry At A Funny Slow Pace

People actually wish to have robots to do housework for them like what the Jetson’s Rosie does. However, the latest effort of the startup Mira Robotics has not been quite there yet.

The company unveiled on February 7 a machine which could perform a range of laundry duties at a recent event in the capital of Japan. After taking a look at the demo video, we could conclude that some people will wish to own Ugo at their home although we cannot imagine who they might be.

Interestingly, Ugo moves at a funny slow pace in the demo. It needs under a minute in order to pick up one towel from the basket to put it over a rod to dry.

However, we cannot actually see the way that Ugo removes the towel from the washing machine or folds it. These two tasks are said to be demonstrated at an unveiling event, according to The Japan Times. Their cameras are likely to run out of hard drive capacity before Ugo finished.

Despite the low speed of the robot, it cannot be denied that it is actually able to do laundry. It may be similar to a crock-pot that users need to set its bot up and forget about it.

Another funny thing about the robot is that it is not autonomous. Human still has to control every move of the robot, which is revealed in the second demo video.

So why do people need this robot when it is not autonomous and they can hire a man to do laundry? Mira said the reason is that people do not want the appearance of others at their homes.

During the event, Mira stated that Ugo offers a privacy level which a man does not. The robot’s cameras ignore anything that is not related to its duty and it is probably restricted to particular areas of its owner’s home.

According to an article in The Japan Times, Mira believes Ugo will help users cut housekeeping service cost by almost 80% each month when getting a trained operator to control a number of robots. However, it seems that the robot requires the undivided attention of an operator.

The company tends to carry out Ugo’s closed beta testing in August of 2019 and launch it in May next year. It believes that it can attract thousands of users in 2021. However, it still needs to improve the speed of the robot, if not, we should continue to wait for Rosie.