KEY POINTS
- Tau Robotics offers a San Francisco cleaning service in which humanoid robots are piloted remotely by people.
- The company uses data from each visit to train AI models for future autonomous cleaning.
- A reporter's two visits showed capable but slow robots that struggled with stairs and made several mistakes.
A San Francisco startup called Tau Robotics is sending humanoid robots into private homes to clean, and the machines are still controlled by people. MIT Technology Review reported on the service after a reporter booked two cleanings without first telling the company she was a journalist.
According to the report, the robots stand about four and a half feet tall. Each has a 3D-printed head with antennae for communicating with the company's headquarters and two 3D-printed claw hands. Tau found that more humanlike hands were not durable enough, and the claws handle most cleaning tasks surprisingly well. Human pilots watch through cameras in the robots' heads and wrists.
