It a household chore few look forward to, but now a robot could take care of the ironing on your behalf.

Scientists have developed a machine that can flawlessly iron clothes without any creases.

The robot uses sensors and a 'wrinkle analysis algorithm' to ensure shirts, trousers and other items come out looking as if they were ironed by a human.

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Scientists at Columbia University have developed a robot that can flawlessly iron clothes without any creases. Such was the achievement that the researchers came up with the name 'dynamic ironing' for when the robot was moving

Such was the achievement that the researchers came up with the name 'dynamic ironing' for when the robot was moving.

Ironing has proved difficult for robot researchers to crack as it involves a lot of precision movements.

The team from the University of Columbia admitted as much in their paper and said that they found it a 'very challenging task'.

They managed it using two Xbox Kinect motion sensors which allowed the robot iron to map out the garment before starting work using two special scans.

The ironing robot (pictured right) uses two Xbox Kinect sensors and a 'wrinkle analysis algorithm' (left) to ensure that shirts, trousers and other items come out looking as if they were done by a human

The report said: 'The curvature scan can estimate the height deviation of the cloth surface, while the discontinuity scan can effectively detect sharp surface features, such as wrinkles.

IRONING OUT THE CREASES Researchers at the Columbia University have developed a robot that can flawlessly iron clothes without any creases. The robot uses two Xbox Kinect motion sensors to map out the garment before starting work. It then uses a 'wrinkle analysis algorithm' to ensure shirts, trousers and other items come out looking as if they were done by a human. Advertisement

'We use this information to detect the regions that need to be pulled and extended before ironing, and the other regions where we want to detect wrinkles and apply ironing to remove the wrinkles.'

Wrinkles were called 'height bumps' for the purposes of the research.

They were dealt with in what was described as an 'optimized order', rather than randomly ironing the garment like some humans do.

Professor Peter Allen, a computer scientist at Columbia and co-author of the paper, told Motherboard: 'Basically, we're just saying that if you have an object that doesn't have a rigid set of states, you have to have a way to model it and deal with it, and what we were able to do is model these objects in a very nice way and figure it out.'

A video on YouTube shows a successful ironing attempt with an iron attached to a robot arm that is working on a shirt.

Ironing has proved difficult for robot researchers to crack as it involves a lot of precision movements, but the robot from the Columbia team does a decent job (pictured)

The report said: 'Experimental results show that using our wrinkle analysis algorithm, our robot is able to iron the cloth surface and effectively remove the wrinkles.'

The researchers now plan to carry out further experiments involving how much force the robot should apply to make their results even better.

The ironing robot is the latest instance where machines are taking over the jobs of people in the home.

ROBOTS FOR HOUSEHOLD CHORES Using robots to automate household chores has been a dream of mankind since before space race era of the 1950s Using robots to automate household chores has been a dream of mankind since before the 1950s, but the space race era really kicked things into overdrive. The public waited expectantly for robots which would bring them drinks, do the laundry, walk their pets and more. While computers increasingly play a role in managing our elements of our home lives, from heating and lighting settings to managing security systems, robots are still largely absent. Probably the closest thing we currently have to the imagined household robots of the 50's are Roomba-style vacuum cleaners. Other groups have made attempts to spur on the robotic revolution, but there are still a few creases to iron out. Advertisement

Computers can now turned on your heating and alarm system remotely via an Internet connection.

Siemens had come close to ironing clothes with a robot with the Dressman machine, which was the shape of the upper torso of a human body and ironed the shirt by blowing hot air into it.

The findings are due to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Stockholm in May.

A German firm has made a bizarre contraption, called the Tubie, which it claims can dry and iron a shirt in just seven minutes.