San Francisco startup sends humanoid robots to clean homes for $30 an hour, but humans still control the machines remotely

San Francisco tech startup Tau Robotics has, in a feat, launched AI robots that provide home and office cleaning services, including vacuuming floors, clearing clutter, and taking out the trash. "Yeah, yesterday we made it public that we are starting to offer a cleaning service with humanoids in SF," Alex Koch, CEO and co-founder of Tau Robotics, told ABC News. The move puts the long-hyped promise of household robots to an early, public test, and it's already drawing skepticism from some robotics expert.How Tau Robotics' humanoid cleaning service worksTau Robotics, a San Francisco startup, has begun offering home cleaning services using humanoid robots, according to the company's CEO and co-founder, Alex Koch, who confirmed the launch. The pricing and scope are narrow for now, the company is offering the service for $30 an hour to a select group of applicants in San Francisco. On its own website, the company describes the offering similarly, pricing it at $30 per hour for each humanoid unit and noting that two robots work a job at a time, with access currently invite-only through a waitlist.Crucially, the robots aren't operating on their own. Koch said today's AI cannot yet fully control a humanoid robot by itself, instead, a human operator runs the robot remotely from a central location, with AI assistance. Tau Robotics' own site echoes this, describing its robots as "operated by humans and AI." That distinction matters for anyone picturing a fully autonomous machine let loose in their living room; what's actually being deployed is closer to a teleoperated robot with AI support layered on top.What these humanoid cleaning robots can actually doAccording to Koch, the robots are already handling some basic chores reasonably well. He said vacuuming is "working pretty well already," and that basic tasks like wiping a kitchen counter are "pretty doable" too.The company's site lists a similar, narrow set of tasks, such as, wiping down counters and tabletops, vacuuming hardwood floors and rugs (including along baseboards), taking out the trash, and clearing clutter or spills off the floor. It also advertises broader categories, that are, house cleaning, deep cleaning and office cleaning. Tau Robotics has also released videos showing the humanoid robots performing cleaning tasks, including one sped-up clip of a robot exiting a minivan before a cleaning job.Who can book Tau Robotics' humanoid cleaning service in San FranciscoKoch framed the launch less as a replacement for existing cleaners and more as a way to widen the market. He said many of the company's initial customers are people who either didn't previously use house cleaners or only hired human cleaners infrequently, meaning the service, in his view, mainly expands the overall market rather than displacing it.Consistent with that framing, the company says it is currently inviting a limited number of households to sign up, rather than opening the service broadly, with interested customers asked to provide their email and neighbourhood to join a waitlist.Why a UC Berkeley robotics professor is sceptical of humanoid home cleaning robotsNot everyone is convinced the technology is ready for prime time. Ken Goldberg, a UC Berkeley engineering professor with 40 years in the field, expressed scepticism in an ABC News interview about humanoid robots' current home-cleaning capabilities. He said it's "too early" and that he'd be surprised if the robots could do anything close to a genuinely useful cleaning job, noting that even picking objects up off the floor remains a challenge for robots, and that sweeping or wiping counters and areas underneath things is still very difficult.Goldberg also questioned how representative the company's promotional footage really is. He raised doubts about the prerecorded demonstration videos, pointing out that viewers can't tell whether footage has been sped up, whether a human was working behind the scenes, or whether the environment was carefully staged to make a single successful run possible.The current limitations and future of humanoid robots in home cleaningThe gap between the marketing reel and the messier reality of home cleaning is, in many ways, the story of humanoid robotics right now. Despite the open questions about what the technology can currently do, the broader ambition remains a humanoid robot capable of cleaning an entire home at low cost, a goal that, if realised, could make home cleaning services more widely accessible.For now, though, the San Francisco rollout looks less like a robot househelp moving in and more like a human-piloted machine, with AI in a supporting role, learning to vacuum floors and wipe down counters one job at a time.Catch the latest World News and Live updates. Download the TOI app.