This Baguni washing machine concept saves a single step in the laundry process, the step where you empty your clothes basket into the washing machine. I’ll be honest, I never realized what a huge problem this was. Apparently it’s a serious issue to actually transfer clothes from the basket to the washer.

You still have to unload the washing machine when the cycle’s done and put your wet clothes into the dryer after, but hey this washer will probably save you a whole 30 seconds, while keeping the clothes capacity of the machine very small. So, this concept is good in theory, not in practice.

Whether you have a washing machine in your home or go to the corner laundromat, doing wash is a royal pain. Especially for bloggers. I’ve had whole hours pass in the blink of an eye, sometimes whole days get eaten up in some black hole and so household chores pile up. The iBasket could really make life easier. The brainchild of Guopeng Liang, the iBasket was one of the Electrolux Design Lab ’08 finalists.

It is specifically designed to store and clean your soiled, smelly wearables easily. It’s programmed to go into a wash cycle once it reaches a ceratain weight. It even sports a built-in air refresh system removes odor, too. Once finished, the basket flashes some LEDs. We can only hope that it goes into production soon. This place is pretty messy.

Washing machines are big and bulky. They always have been. Therefore they could use a radical new design. The Sfera spherical washing machine is shaped like…Well a sphere. It’s small enough to take up residence in your bathroom somewhere and though it will save space, you won’t be able to do any big loads of laundry.

With that in mind, it would probably be good for the single midget bachelor, but not many others. The entire ball spins to get your clothes clean, you’ll just have to do laundry all day. And that’s the problem with small washing machines. About the only way to solve it is to put a washing machine above your toilet or in your bathroom wall.

This robot looks somewhat like a human-sized Nintendo Wii controller with arms attached. It’s the SmartPal V created by Yasukawa Electric Corporation. He was designed from the ground up to be a service robot, helping in the home with daily chores. It will sort your laundry by color and type, and even hang it up. It’s pretty smart when it comes to interaction as well. Thanks to 4 CCD cameras and voice recognition, it can recognize and respond to individuals, or just wander around and keep the place looking good on its own. With 21 joints including a bendable waist, it can pick things up off the floor, which it will gladly do for it’s entire 2.5 hours of battery life.

The robot stands about four and a half feet tall and weighs 280 pounds with a top speed of 2.2 mph. I’m thinking those are the stats of many of it’s human maid counterparts. Rest assured, when it kills you dead, your shirts will be immaculate.