Resolved: Laundry folding is the way forward for residence robotics
Abstract created by Good Solutions AI
In abstract:
- PCWorld examines Syncere’s Lume, a $1,500 residence robotic that mixes cellular ground lamp performance with laundry folding capabilities.
- The gadget represents the house robotics business’s give attention to automating family chores, notably laundry duties that buyers discover tedious.
- Syncere employs a “Robotics as a Service” method, although the robotic’s gradual folding pace raises questions on practicality versus price.
Rejoice, people! For those who’ve been questioning the way you’ll be integrating robotic helpers into your life—, past robotic vacuums and garden mowers—you’ll be able to sleep simpler understanding your laundry-folding chores will probably be robotically resolved.
Coming in sizzling like a pretentious cologne advert from the 90s, a brand new product launch video from Syncere—which appears like cologne, sure?—unveils a house robotic referred to as Lume. Our robotic helper seems to do two issues: Scoot across the residence as a cellular ground lamp and fold your laundry… painfully gradual.
The Lume video is breathtakingly pretentious, set in a cavernous post-modern mansion with floor-to-ceiling home windows, and inhabited by an attractive, picture-perfect couple. They dance effortlessly as Lume scoots round illuminating the house, folds a suspiciously small pile of laundry, and apparently finishes making a mattress (although we by no means see it battling the appliance of a fitted sheet).
There’s loads to study from this Lume launch, however your first takeaway ought to be that the house robotics business is touchdown on laundry-folding as the subsequent nuisance activity it goals to handle.
Certainly, it’s unimaginable to take a look at Lume and never instantly think about one of many greatest spectacles at CES 2026: LG’s humanoid-styled laundry-folding robotic, which labored so slowly that the majority of us simply needed to scream, “Simply give it to me! I can do it myself.”
Your second takeaway: Dwelling robotics, and its marriage to AI, is clearly turning into a enterprise capital-fueled, “let’s simply safe funding and do that!” factor. I’m instantly reminded of my protection some 10 years in the past, when the {hardware} dev neighborhood latched on to “sensors” and we noticed corporations trial-ballooning loopy devices like calorie-counting “good cups.”
Nevertheless it does get extra eye-rolly than Lume itself. Syncere additionally launched a particularly well-produced, aspirational “Meet Syncere” video that introduces its firm to the world, and, within the reel, founding designer Kevin Li utters a mission assertion that’s so excellent—so concurrently cringey and cheap—I can’t assist however assume the world simply modified in a cloth approach:
“We consider robotics as a service.” And thus, the RaaS business is born!
No, I’m kidding. This time period was gaining traction years in the past, however now it’s getting into the patron house, and I’m involved we’ll all be paying month-to-month subscription charges to maintain our laundry folded and… reliably “up to date.”
Syncere
Nonetheless superbly designed the Lume could also be, all articulated of arm and high-gloss, anodized to perfection, I give credit score to CEO Dr Aaron Tan for the creation of an “atelier” for residence robotic growth. Syncere’s {hardware} tinkering happens not in a chilly warehouse or workplace park, however quite in a typical higher middle-class residence in Palo Alto, CA. I feel Tan and I take advantage of the identical expresso machine.
It helps give Syncere that HP/Apple garage-hacker origin story, and props to Tan: For those who’re going to design the way forward for residence robotics, it’s actually finest completed in a WFH atmosphere.
On its Lume product web page, Syncere says the lamp can “deal with soft-material chores like making the mattress, folding laundry and resetting pillows.” Tellingly, “there’s no subscription for the primary batch” (emphasis mine). You may pre-order one Lume for $1,500 and two for $2,500.
