The promising thing about laundry-folding robots is that they target a job that everybody does frequently, and nobody really likes. But to be successful in robotics, especially in consumer robotics, you have to be both affordable and reliable, and robots are, still, generally awful at those things. Laundroid, a robotic system that could ingest wads of laundry and somehow spit out neatly folded clothes, put on a few demos at CES over the past few years, but the Japanese company behind it just announced bankruptcy--probably because the robot didn't work all the time, and would likely have been absurdly expensive. Laundroid may not have been a success, but does that mean that other laundry-folding robots, most notably Foldimate, are doomed as well? The original Laundroid concept was to combine washing clothes, drying clothes, ironing clothes, and folding clothes into one single (magical?)

Out of the 4,400 exhibitors in Las Vegas for the massive consumer tech show, here are the best ones we found. As you might expect, covering the massive Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas each year is a thrill for tech enthusiasts, as you get to kick the tires, so to speak, on gadgets and gear not commercially available for months or, sometimes, years. But when you're talking about 4,400 exhibitors, you bet there's no shortage of ho-hum products, blatant copycats, or ridiculous concepts. Still, within the vast convention halls housing CES, there are gems to be mined. When it comes to products I'd actually buy, the following are a few 2019 standouts for me so far.

For women of the early 20th century, the first automatic laundry machine must have seemed like a miracle. Gone were the days of washboards and handcranks, of raw fingers and hunched shoulders. With just the push of a button, you could send your clothes spinning. When you returned a mere hour later, the suds had cleared and your wardrobe felt like new. These days, though, the laundromat feels utterly devoid of miracles.

I was standing off to the side of the showroom at CES while engineers worked in hushed voices, fussing over a $16,000 artificial intelligence-powered laundry-folding machine. The machine wasn't giving back the T-shirt I put in, and for one brief, terrifying second, I really thought I broke it. I had brought my own Verge T-shirt to try out a prototype of Laundroid, and I had to coax Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane into letting me drop my shirt in, instead of the demo shirts they had prepared. As he expected, it didn't work. After about 15 minutes, the Laundroid opened up to reveal nothing but an empty drawer.

I was standing off to the side of the showroom at CES while engineers worked in hushed voices, fussing over a $16,000 artificial intelligence-powered laundry-folding machine. The machine wasn't giving back the T-shirt I put in, and for one brief, terrifying second, I really thought I broke it. I had brought my own Verge T-shirt to try out a prototype of Laundroid, and I had to coax Seven Dreamers CEO Shin Sakane into letting me drop my shirt in, instead of the demo shirts they had prepared. As he expected, it didn't work. After about 15 minutes, the Laundroid opened up to reveal nothing but an empty drawer.

When I heard that not one, but two laundry-folding robots would be on display at the CES tech show in Las Vegas, I initially ignored them. After all, I assumed they were vaporware. Foldimate, whose consumer-focused robot is expected to sell for $980, only had a mockup on display, and customers who order now won't get their robot until late 2019. And, although the $16,000 (!) Laundroid actually folded clothes on the show floor, the refrigerator-sized device was big enough that, theoretically, a human could've been inside doing all the work. It's not that robots will never be folding your laundry.

Are you ready to talk to your toilet? Those are just a few of the ideas we've seen at CES 2018, the annual consumer technology confab here at the Las Vegas Convention Center and other venues. Sure, there are tech titans here battling to control our computers, TVs and smart homes. But our favorite part is the thousands of other companies that gather to launch something new. While these ideas sometimes catch on, like fitness trackers and wireless ear buds, many go nowhere.

As promised, FoldiMate showed off its laundry-folding robot at CES 2017 in Las Vegas. This machine is intended to be a household robot that makes folding clothes hassle-free for families. FoldiMate is among the companies that are in attendance at the big tech trade show this week. After teasing about its upcoming family robot for a while, the California-based company is finally showing off its invention to the public. The FoldiMate Family robot is designed to be a machine that takes care of clothes once they are washed.

Soon, evenings and weekends spent folding laundry could be a thing of the past. Laundroid, a sleek refrigerator-sized machine developed by Japanese company Seven Dreamers, has been designed to relieve you of one the more mundane domestic chores. Users dump their unsorted clothes into a pull-out drawer near the base. Inside, a robot picks up each item of clothing, uses a combination of image analysis and artificial intelligence to figure out what it is--a shirt, a skirt, pants--and then folds it accordingly. It's not the only robot that wants to join your laundry room.

Video Friday is your weekly selection of awesome robotics videos, collected by your edgy Automaton bloggers. We'll also be posting a weekly calendar of upcoming robotics events for the next two months; here's what we have so far (send us your events!): Let us know if you have suggestions for next week, and enjoy today's videos. IHMC has managed to get their ATLAS balancing on the edge of cinder blocks, balancing itself with outstretched arms as it does so. The robot is able to detect and explore partial footholds (in this case line contacts).