Behold Clothbot, a small machine that climbs clothing:
The inventors presented technical details:
“System and Design of Clothbot: a Robot for Flexible Clothes Climbing,” Yuanyuan Liu, Xinyu Wu, Huihuan Qian, Duan Zheng, Jianquan Sun and Yangsheng Xu [Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese University of Hong Kong], paper presented at 2012 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, in St. Paul, Minn.
Evan Ackerman described it, in IEEE Spectrum.