After years of development, the owner of the Uniqlo clothing brand has created a robot that can fold clothes, paving the way for fully automated factories.

Last year, Uniqlo owner Fast Retailing replaced 90 percent of workers at its flagship warehouse in Tokyo with robots - and now it is ready to go further.

The world's second-largest fashion retailer has been desperate to automate its warehouse and distribution systems, claiming a severe shortage of manual workers due to Japan's ageing population. Just over a year ago, it pledged to invest 100 billion yen (£700m) in the effort, including revamping the Tokyo warehouse.

But until now, there was still one job the robots had not been able to perform: folding clothes.

Although a simple task for humans, folding clothes requires a level of dexterity and an ability to distinguish between items that has been hard to conquer for robots.