A robot is seen folding a black t-shirt. The humanoid robot is named Optimus. See the video in the following.
This video has been shared on the internet and social media platforms for a few days. It was first shared by Elon Musk on his Twitter page. The video is embedded here from his 'X' post.
I would say this is a great achievement in automation and robotics for the apparel industry. If a robot can handle fabric (clothes) like flexible material, the application of the same can be spread over other activities where a human task can be replaced by a humanoid robot for many repetitive tasks.
The robot first removes the black shirt from a laundry basket, spreads it on the table before it, and folds it easily. As has been pointed out by a report in Forbes, viewers caught a little behind-the-scenes sneak peek.
About two or three times in the video, one can see something scooting into the bottom-right corner of the screen. It appears that an engineer seems to be hanging out just off-screen, giving the robot some choreography tips.
Optimus folds a shirt pic.twitter.com/3F5o3jVLq1
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 15, 2024