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The time-consuming and mundane chore of laundry could soon be banished to history, with an invention that harnesses the power of our own competitiveness. Lee Wei Chen, a 27-year-old student at Kingston University, London, has invented a fiendishly clever combination of a video game and a washing machine. Housed in the classic arcade-game cabinet, the top half is a challenging coin-operated driving game, while the bottom half is a front-loading washer. Even if it was just a novel way to pass the time as the washing machine ran through it's yle, Mr Lee's idea would be a worthy one. But wait, as advertisers say, there's more. Mr Lee, originally from Taiwan, has linked the circuitry of the two machines, so the washing cycle is dependent on the proficiency of the gamer. Nail the game's various levels, with a decent score and without losing precious lives, and the laundry will be done in no time at all. But, if you stink at the game, your clothes will stink too. The washing machine will stop wherever it is in it's cycle, and it will refuse to start up again until the gamer adds more money and continues to play. The idea came to Mr Lee after he realised he had been wasting a good portion of his 27 years playing video games. He said: "I realised that the skills I had developed in the virtual world were useless in the real world. I wanted to make them useful." | 
