Inside San Francisco's Robot Housekeeping Experiment

Humanoid robots are already cleaning homes In San Francisco, vacuuming and wiping down surfaces, attending to the ordinary chores of the day. Yet for all their appearance, there is something less futuristic about what is at work behind them: a human operator  calling the shots. 

Tau Robotics, a San Francisco startup founded in 2024, has a home-cleaning service built around Unitree G1 humanoids it has put its own modifications on. A MarketWatch report puts the price tag on an uncustomised machine at around $55,000. The company’s present booking system calls for two robots for a one-hour session at $60, or $30 for just one. 

It is an invitation-only service while Tau amasses real world data for the AI systems that will one day be able to do without an operator. Ted Pinkerton, the founding engineer, was accompanied by Bolo and Sergey, a pair of humanoids, when MarketWatch made a visit to see them put through their paces in a local apartment. They mopped, vacuumed and wiped surfaces, demonstrating that they could complete basic household chores with remote assistance. 

But more demanding activities proved difficult. Folding laundry is a slow process; the report notes a towel will take four minutes to be folded and a pair of jeans over a minute. Even loading the dishwasher is no easy matter and demands some deft positioning. There have been broken dishes to account for as well, according to Tau. 

To date, the company has eight humanoids in operation and close to 100 cleaning jobs under its belt, amounting to roughly 160 hours of paid time. Those figures show that the machines are being used in customers' homes, although their performance still depends heavily on human involvement. 

An operator has cameras on each robot to relay footage and direct it. That video also doubles as training material for AI down the road per the privacy policy, and though a customer may have it deleted, collection is a required part of the service. As for the microphones, Tau says they are off so operators are not privy to what is said in the home. 

However, the cameras are still recording people and the room in which they are working, which gives pause for thought on the matter of privacy when one lets a remotely run machine in. 

Tau is now aiming to reach the point where it has general-purpose robots for the house that do not require constant oversight. In the meantime, the cleaning service is a way to make revenue and to gain experience in settings a lab cannot replicate. 

It is a case study in what household humanoids are capable of at present. They can handle some of the daily grind, but issues of speed and autonomy and privacy are yet to be resolved. The biggest development may come when those machines no longer need someone directing their every move.