Few of us relish housework. Who wouldn’t welcome a helping hand to tackle chores like laundry?

So it may be exciting to learn that laundry-folding robots already exist. The best-known version is the Japanese clothes-folding machine the Laundroid. Another one has recently been invented, too, with software designed by the University of California, Berkeley and hardware by Rethink Robotics.

But don’t get too excited. While the robots have an admirable level of concentration on the task at hand, their progress is painfully slow. The Laundroid takes four minutes to fold an item. The Rethink Robotics helper? Fifteen.

The robots may be coming, but probably not for a while.

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Still, getting the technology even this far was a feat. And developing robots that can assist at home doesn’t just help with the laundry: it allows researchers to understand core problems with AI in general. If they can crack a laundry-folding robot, they can apply these lessons to other, more critical situations, such as emergency response, disaster recovery or household caregiving.