Panasonic Launching Translation Megaphones and Laundry-Folding Robot

Panasonic has been involved in developing some pretty interesting and unique technologies lately, including investing $60 million USD in creating the world’s first laundry-folding robot. Dubbed “Laundroid”, the robot was made by Japanese start-up Seven Dreamers, and has the ability to fold and sort a shirt in ten minutes. The machine is the size of a refrigerator and doubles as a sort-of automated closet. Seven Dreamers claims that they have developed the laundry-folding robot because people on average spend over 9,000 hours (that is over 372 days) in their lifetime doing the chore.

To use, unsorted clothing are placed in a bottom drawer while the machine catalogs the different types of clothing and is able to recognize and learn the difference between shorts and trousers. The laundry-folding machine will be on display at CES Las Vegas and will be available by March 2017. A washer/dryer combo that also sorts and folds is also being developed by Panasonic but is not expected to be ready until 2019.

Panasonic will also be releasing a megaphone that can translate on-the-fly. For now, the device can translate between English, Japanese, Chinese and Korean, with future plans to add Russian, developed for corporate use but it can connect over the internet and get software updates. The device uses commonly used presets to match the speaker and works regardless of background noise, so it can be useful in events such as emergencies, police crowd control, corporate events or used simply in tourist areas.  The translator is not offered as a stand-alone device, but is instead available as a service for $183 per month on a three-year contract.