Free your hands! Fold clothes in 36 seconds with a 100% success rate.
West Lake Robotics' intelligent clothes-folding robot makes its debut at the 2026 China International Big Data Industry Fair.
From September 23 to 27, the 5th Global Digital Trade Fair, themed "Meeting the AI Future at the Digital Trade Fair," was held at the Hangzhou Convention and Exhibition Center. 2,008 companies showcased their products and services in the 170,000-square-meter exhibition area, with embodied intelligence being one of the most attention-grabbing themes of this year's fair.
A clear change is underway: from "moving" on stage to "working" in factories and "being used" in homes, robots are rapidly moving into real-world scenarios. The intelligent clothes-folding robot demonstration by Westlake Robotics at booth T050 in Hall 3 of the Hangzhou Convention and Exhibition Center, part of the "AI + Home Services" exhibition area, vividly illustrates this trend.
Why is folding a piece of clothing so difficult?
Imagine coming home after a long day to a pile of laundry on the sofa. The simple wish of "If only someone could fold it for me" is far from simple for a robot. Folding clothes is a typical scenario for manipulating flexible objects: clothing has no fixed shape, the wrinkles are different each time, each grasp brings new deformation, and the fabric's softness, stiffness, and thickness vary greatly, placing certain demands on visual recognition, flexible manipulation, and path planning. Traditional robots are usually programmed with fixed parameters for a single task, requiring clothes to be pre-arranged neatly, making them difficult to handle slight changes in the environment or the clothing itself.
36 seconds, 100%: The General Brain WR1 provides a new answer.
At the West Lake Robotics booth, a new solution to this problem was found. In just 36 seconds, with a 100% success rate and extremely strong anti-interference capabilities, the intelligent clothes-folding robot, equipped with West Lake Robotics' self-developed general-purpose brain WR1, autonomously identified clothing, determined its location, planned its operational path, and independently completed the folding and return to its original position at the China International Big Data Industry Fair. This smooth operation attracted many visiting guests and professional visitors.
The West Lake Robotics booth became a popular photo spot.
Behind this operation is Westlake Robotics' self-developed general-purpose brain, WR1, which integrates a Visual Language Action Model (VLA) and a World Model (WM) using original technology: VLA translates visual observations and verbal commands into understanding and decision-making for tasks, while the World Model is used to predict environmental changes and deduce the possible consequences of actions. The two work together to enable the robot to see and understand the real world and make autonomous decisions.
From folding clothes to humanoid robots: A base set, more possibilities
In a home setting, chores like folding clothes, organizing, and tidying up rely on the same underlying capability: the perception and manipulation of flexible, irregular objects. The value of a general-purpose brain isn't limited to a single skill, but rather lies in its ability to be transferred and extended to other tasks. The AI+Home Services exhibition area places various technologies in a simulated real-life home space to test their usability in real life. Currently, this technology has been applied by West Lake Robotics to humanoid robots, enabling intelligent movement through collaborative operation with an original general-purpose motion model.
Beyond the exhibition booth, discussions surrounding AI and the home continue. On September 24th, at the roundtable forum "The Transformation of Home Services in the AI Era – A Two-Way Race Between Technology for Good and Family-Friendly Living," Wei Zhenyu, the company's Deputy General Manager of Technology, exchanged ideas with guests from universities, industries, venture capital institutions, and enterprises.
Wei Zhenyu, Deputy General Manager of Westlake Robotics Technology, attended the roundtable forum.
Wei Zhenyu stated that whether robots can enter homes depends primarily on their safety and controllability, not on their capabilities. Low-risk tasks can be completed autonomously, while high-risk operations require user confirmation and should not be performed without due assurance. Simultaneously, family privacy must be protected, leaving ultimate control to the user. He concluded the conversation by saying, "Let robots understand the world better, and understand people better; let technology be more capable, and also have clearer boundaries."
Westlake Robotics is Westlake University's first high-quality achievement transformation enterprise in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics. From original algorithms in the laboratory to the intelligent clothes-folding robot at the China International Big Data Industry Fair, the path of technology moving towards everyday life is clearly visible. Embodied intelligence ultimately relies on reliable value delivery. Westlake Robotics will continue to deepen its original general-purpose brain and cerebellum technologies, promoting robots into more homes and industrial scenarios, and making embodied intelligence a true infrastructure that serves life and empowers production.