San Franciscans can now hire a house cleaner that never takes a lunch break. Tau Robotics, a local startup, has begun offering $30-an-hour home cleaning done by humanoid robots, CEO and co-founder Alex Koch said this week, pitching the service as a way to make cleaning help affordable to people who've never hired human cleaners, ABC News reports. The bots aren't autonomous maids, though. A human operator controls each robot remotely, with AI assisting rather than running the show. An adult needs to be home while the robot visits. Gatsby, another San Francisco startup, launched a similar service earlier this year, charging a flat $150 per clean.
Koch says the machines can already handle basics like vacuuming and wiping kitchen counters, but skeptics say the marketing is ahead of the tech. UC Berkeley engineering professor Ken Goldberg, who has worked in robotics for four decades, calls it "too early" and doubts the robots can reliably tackle real-world messes, from scattered objects to tight spaces. "Being able to pick up objects off the floor is even still a challenge for robots today," he says. "And being able to sweep and wipe out areas of, you know, counters and underneath things, that is very, very difficult." He also questions polished demo videos on the company's website, suggesting they may have been sped up or staged.
Featured robots on the website include Elon: "After a few cleanings I learn where your things belong and put them back there, rather than tidying them into a pile." Tau's longer-term aim: a low-cost robot that can clean an entire home without a human operator. In what the Gadgeteer predicts could be a dealbreaker for many potential customers, cameras on the robot's head and wrists record footage of the visit to train the company's AI, and the terms "hand Tau a perpetual, worldwide, royalty free license to your footage."
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
