Laundry-Folding Humanoids

AI is now into everything from smartphones to smart homes, yet many still feel its impact is missing from real-life tasks like everyday chores—but Figure's Helix is the first humanoid robot with multi-fingered hands that fold laundry fully autonomously.

In a logistics setting, the Vision Language Action model recently demonstrated an hour of fully autonomous package reorientation. Then, the same model from the AI robotics company was directly applied to folding laundry. “Folding laundry sounds mundane for a person, but this is one of the most challenging dexterous manipulation tasks for a humanoid robot,” Figure explained, “Towels are deformable, constantly changing shape, bending unpredictably, and prone to wrinkling or tangling. There’s no fixed geometry to memorize, and no single ‘correct’ grasp point." This laundry-folding humanoid was made possible with an end-to-end neural network and coordinated finger controls that adapt as needed in real-time to trace, pinch, and smooth surfaces.