Can a humanoid robot clean your house? A San Francisco company says yes

Beginning in August, Tau Robotics began to accept reservations in San Francisco, Calif., for its humanoid robot to visit apartments and homes to perform house-cleaning chores for $30 an hour.

“We thought, OK, what is the task that no one wants to do? And that’s like cleaning the toilet or making your bed,” Tau Robotics co-founder Cornelia Weinzierl said.

Comparatively, the consumer website Angi, formerly known as Angie's List, says the average cost for a standard house cleaning in San Francisco is $150, with the average hourly cost about $85. It says the exact costs depend on the number and size of bedrooms and bathrooms, the frequency of cleanings and add-on services, such as windows, laundry and pets, among others.

Standing at 4 feet 4 inches and weighing 77 pounds, the robot can walk up stairs, on carpet, on tile and on hardwood floors with its rubber soles and pilates socks.

It can also use its thermal-polyurethane gripper hands to use cleaning supplies such as a spray bottle or vacuum.

“It's wiping the surfaces, vacuum cleaning, mopping, it can with some teleoperation then also do like unloading and loading the dishes, making the bed, changing the bed sheets, cleaning the toilet, scrubbing the tub, like the list goes on and on and basically what a human can do it can also do,” Weinzierl said.

Learning curves

Currently, the robot is operated by artificial intelligence in conjunction with a remote teleoperator but Weinzierl said the company aims to increase autonomy in the weeks, months and years to come.

Many of the tasks are taught to the robot via imitation learning. Weinzierl said employees conducted human demonstrations for the robot to observe, adding that the more data they have, the better the model becomes.

Weinzierl gave vacuuming as an example. The task was not done very strategically in the beginning, with the robot missing some spots that may have been blocked by objects such as tables and chairs.

Garvit Gupta, 31, a resident who works in the tech industry, said curiosity drove him to sign up for the service.

“It is pretty good at spraying the cleaner. And then just the slab looked pretty clean after. That was really, really good," Gupta said. "I think it did not do as good a job with the bathtub, but they told me that it's also pretty new. It's something new that they're trying, so no judgments.”

Co-existing

Reuters showed a video of the Tau Robotics humanoid cleaning to Violet Ostuni, founder and CEO of the cleaning company Clean Cozy Home and Spaces, and asked for her reaction. She said she had mixed feelings.

“It’s hard to compare because our cleaners are humans, so comparing robots and humans are two entirely different things,” Ostuni said.

When asked whether she was concerned about a new competitor, Ostuni said she wasn’t worried, saying she sees a continuing demand for companies like hers.

“I think there's a space for both to coexist. I think there's, you know, maybe such as open, large venues would be maybe a great opportunity for them to tackle,” she said. She added that, when it comes to more detailed cleaning needs, “I do believe that having humans take those tasks on, those kinds of cleaning opportunities, is not going away anytime soon.”

Weinzierl concedes that Tau’s robot is a little slower than a human cleaner, and human cleaners are still better, but says the robot improves with each cleaning.

She said the company aims for its robots to complement, rather than replace, human cleaners. As the technology improves, she said the machines could work alongside cleaning companies or even allow cleaners to transition into jobs as remote teleoperators.

“House cleaning is generally not something that a lot people really enjoy,” she said. “And so it's not so about taking away jobs, but filling in the gaps that are already there.”