Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Dressman - The Ironing Robot

The Dressman ironing robot is invented by Siemens with the intention to ease the laborious household chore, ironing. It achieves its objectives of drying and ironing clothes by combining simple technology with clever designs.

How It Works
The ironing board is cleverly designed to take on the shape of the upper torso of the human body. Upon placing the damp shirt on the figure, its interior will automatically be inflated with hot air and puffs up the shirt, thus removing any creases on the shirt that had resulted from the washing. The user can select the ironing cycle time by adjusting the rotary selector although the average time to iron a shirt takes 7-8 minutes. After the ironing is completed, the device will switch to blow cool air on the shirt for a minute to stabilize and prolong the crispness of the ironed shirt.

The Technology
The technology behind the Dressman robot is simple. It comprises of a heater box with a number of resistance elements that will begin to store up heat from the point that the user start to place the shirt on the figure. It will only be puffed with hot air when the shirt is properly positioned and the user activates the start button. The figure itself is made of three types of cloths with different permeability for hot air to ensure more hot air flow for thicker parts of the shirt (e.g. the cuffs and pocket) to achieve an even ironing effect.

Selling Point
Compared to conventional irons, the Dressman protects the fabric and prolongs the pristine look of the garment.

References
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/process_engineering/report-29650.html http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/robots/dn5058

Submitted by
Choo Teck Kwang Adrian U036224U

13 comments:

Industry said...

Thng Kang Liang U036278W

I think the Dressman looks cool, but from the picture, it seems that it is a bit bulky and takes up quite a substantial portion of the room.

It would be better if other capabilities such as house cleaning can be incorporated into the Dressman

dars.edutainment said...

U036418N Tan Chee Boon

What about the robot for ironing pants? If they only have the top portion, you still need an iron and ironing board. Quite useless in that sense then.

dars.edutainment said...

Jaseema Banu U036882L

I feel that work on this robot can be extended to enable it to iron skirts and pants too. it would be quite infeasible to buy this robot just to iron shirts.

Home said...

Lin Changjie U036185J

From the link, I read that the power consumption of the dressman is 3300W, double of the normal iron!

Wow while the shirt is ironed, we can expect a big hole to be burnt in our pockets. I think it will be good to try to reduce the power consumption for a start. The idea of dressman is good but besides trying to incorporate the ironing of pants, it can have a folding clothes function after ironing. Now, that will be wonderful!

dars.security said...

I believe that more improvement have to be made to the ironing robot. Some of the improment required are ability to iron a wider range of clothes in tandem with the everchanging modern fashion.

Lai Sing Zie
U036919R

Anonymous said...

Washing machine, drying machine, and now the ironing robot; in the near future, every household might have robot housekeeper to take care of everything, while human just laze around playing the latest video game console.

Teo Hong Wee U036472X

dars.security said...

Azhar Risyad Sunaryo u037028m

Hmm, just wonder, is this machine able to iron difficult-to-iron-stuff such as suit or jacket? If can, then maybe this product can find its market on high class business people who often likes to wear suits. Just my thought though.

But yeah,like Changjie said,with 3300 W power consumption, I think this robot will get quite a tough time to find its customers.

Assistive said...

I think this is just the beginning. IF such a machine is successful then they may consider making robots which can iron the entire range of clothing from shirts to suits. But this will be possible to achieve only if they can reduce the time consumption.
I think such robots will be used more for commercial purposes like in hotels and in such situations power consumption will not be a big issue.
They will also need to address issues like the cloth material used and then generating appropriate amount of heat.
Nevertheless it seems to be a great innovation for people like me who find it difficult to iron shirts.

Naman Agarwal (U037020W)

Medical said...

Personally tried ironing clothes for the whole family in the past, sometimes, it is not just about time but fatigue. Ha Ha!

So I guessed the ironing robot can be quite useful with further improvements. Wondering if more than 1 shirt are wore on the robot, is the ironning still as good. If that is the case, I think power consumption and time issues discussed by many is no longer a problem then.

U036039B Kim Choon Ming, Alvin

Anonymous said...

nice point stated by alvin, but i think another big issue is the size of the robot and the space it takes. perhaps a crawler concept could be thought of to iron clothes irrespective of their shape. something like a normal which can travel around the whole piece of cloth and iron it. But still i think the unknown nature of clothes will make it a very tricky problem to solve
Nitin Batra
-U048708Y

Assistive said...

From the way it works, I wonder whether it saves the trouble of ironing, or just making it more complicated, haha. Maybe it will be more wonderful if the robot is able to put on the cloths, iron it and then take it off.

Wu Zhenyu
U036584N

Home said...

This guy would be a great assistant for me. I think, the biggest advantage is the possibly very low future prize - and the fact that it is blown up, which means that future versions might need little space
Although, it is currently 900 EUR (see blog's reference), the construction seems to be very simple and therefore cheap.
You only have to iron one shirt a day - and I think this guy can make it much easier into everybody's home than any complicated solution.

by Walther Schulze, NT061333Y
April 14, 2007 8:17 AM

Anonymous said...

Although it is only to iron shirts, it is good at it. I'm using it for a few months now, love it.