12-year-old Nigerian just made a laundry folding Robot

Meet Fatiha Abdullahi, a 12-year-old from Nigeria built a fully-functional laundry folding robot that can completely fold clothes in just three seconds.

The 12-year-old’s ingenious device may just be a prototype for now, but she plans to release it as a product soon in Nigerian market. Depending on its success there, it might even be released for the international markets.

She has been coding for only a few years and already has accomplished something practical and innovative. It takes a strong grasp on coding and the underlying concepts to achieve something like this. It is a big achievement to put your knowledge to practical use.

The ‘T-shirt folder’ was made out of a need. According to Fatiha, there are a lot of clothes that need folding after doing laundry, so she worked on this project and solved the problem.

Speaking on how she made it, she told Reuters, “I made it using pins, some beams, and an EV3 brick.” The EV3 brick comes as part of the LEGO Mindstorm Educational kit which is fully programmable to perform various tasks.

What really sets this device apart is not its function; there are other machines in the market that do the same, however, it is the approach used. This robot is significantly cheaper and faster than a finished product already in the market.

At CES 2019, a similar machine called FoldiMate was presented for the same job. It takes five seconds for folding clothes compared to the three seconds of Fatiha Abdullahi’s machine. Moreover, it is also incapable of folding small or large clothes and only works for a short range of sizes. Finally, the Foldimate, costs $1000 which makes it quite inaccessible.

Perhaps Abdullahi’s machine can change that and make this robot more accessible.