Meanwhile, no amount of money can currently buy you a robot that will completely do your laundry, because the problem has not yet been solved. The development of this stuff is not exactly intuitive.
Considering the trend for new construction is to have luxury housing, while problematic in general for much-needed affordable housing, maybe it represents an opportunity to develop a system like this, whereby a developer installs the dumbwaiter in the walls, sets up a dumbwaiter floor, and is the primary investor in a startup that builds out the dumbwaiter tech. As the developer builds out more buildings, and the dumbwaiter can do more things, buyers will pay more for units with the dumbwaiter, and the developer can possibly even license out the dumbwaiter tech to other developers.
I'm sure a custom industrial-scale solution could be designed, but that still leaves the problem of folding. I suppose a compromise might be partial folding, like having the machine gently 'stack' the clothes in a return basket to minimize wrinkles.
Disregarding security and privacy, big apartment complexes with these dumbwaiter could actually work, with shared storage space and and laundry systems.
When autonomous cars fully arrive, I'll bet something like this takes off, particularly in areas with small homes like the Bay Area.
You could charge a subscription fee that allowed up to X monthly trips.
Some time ago, in a different country, I used a storage service where they unloaded the box -- a big unit about 2m tall and deep, with enough space for a couch, several chairs, etc. -- on the street and then picked it up again when you wanted, all scheduled via their web app. Very nice system.
I wrote about a related idea here, expanding on the idea to include an actual internet of things in boxes: http://pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html#Princeton...
I'd also like something for storing and retrieving lots of different types of LEGO.
Related prior work: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~kay/pln/
Maybe a dumb waiter would open in the wall with a little standard sized basket. I'd name what I'm storing, like tennis racket or snow shoes, and it would whisk it away to a storage space under the house or in the walls somewhere. I ask for it by name, the house brings it back to the portal.
An uncluttered house where I can have anything I use once a year within seconds. Hoarding by way of Marie Kondo. Possibly a gross dystopian consumer fantasy, but still.
If the house could just post anything you haven't used in two years on Craigslist, then we'd really be in the future.