Rendered at 05:51:13 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
ceejayoz 11 hours ago [-]
> The company says the robot completes Laundry Flow and Daily Reset tasks autonomously by default, but uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion.
Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
conductr 3 minutes ago [-]
Given how incapable my robotic vacuums and lawnmowers have proven to be, even after several years of iterations, I’d almost prefer if it was all teleoperation and it would hopefully unlock a huge amount of additional tasks it could preform. This would essentially let me hire a human housekeeper at a global vs local wage which is very appealing.
culi 12 minutes ago [-]
If I'm gonna be an early adopter and give them such valuable training data, they should at least give me stock options
coffeebeqn 7 hours ago [-]
Tele-operation through a video feed(?) inside my home. Yeah that sounds pretty creepy
arcticbull 7 hours ago [-]
If I wanted someone taking a look at all the stuff in my home, I'd just pay a cleaner here instead of one behind a desk in what I assume is a low-labor-cost locale. For $50/hr I can have them come in every day for 160 days, and they can manage stairs.
bobbylarrybobby 2 hours ago [-]
Paying for someone to clean your house? Thats so last year.
Why an AI company cleaned my New York City apartment for free
They’re also much less likely to film their activities and upload it to the Internet…
altmanaltman 54 minutes ago [-]
Except these ai fucks are trying to put cameras on all such labor to train future world models and businesses are okay with it since they get paid for doing nothing extra. So yeah they can manage stairs but they might also be recording everything they do
bonestamp2 49 minutes ago [-]
Use an independent cleaner. My cleaning lady is a great cleaner, but she can barely manage her cellphone, so she's not training AIs.
throwitaway222 43 minutes ago [-]
Can you imagine all the customer support calls asking why it keeps showing up next to the shower?
stubish 27 minutes ago [-]
> Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
This will almost certainly depend on the customer and residence. I don't think subscription pricing will be fair, but it can at least be budgeted for out of pensions and such for the people needing to pay for assistance.
guiomie 10 hours ago [-]
Same, I suspect its awful and their strategy is to improve and rely less on it, which would be fine to me if they'd be transparent about it.
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
Can't wait for the Uber version, where anyone with five minutes to spare can fold your laundry from their home.
ares623 2 hours ago [-]
Nah. At least with Uber the driver has self-preservation as an incentive to not just fuck around. What incentive would a freelance nobody have to not do the funniest shit possible inside a stranger's home at least once.
gigel82 7 hours ago [-]
Holy dystopian shit, you might be right. This might just be their new favorite answer when people ask what are all the jobless humans to do after the AI takeover? This... live in squalor, hooked up to VR headsets and doing menial work remotely for the oligarch class, while the AI learns the last few non-automated tasks from them. It's a theme I've seen in many movies over the years.
smnc 6 hours ago [-]
Alex Rivera's 2008 movie Sleep Dealer is not without flaws, but it left quite an impression on me. I watched it it after seeing it recommended here in a comments thread on an article about military drone operators, I should probably watch it again with fresh eyes.
EDIT: Jeez, it looks like that's an 11 years old thread. Time does indeed fly.
EDIT 2: The source for the claim is paywalled, but this is how the Cultural impact chapter of the movie's Wikipedia page closes:
> In 2025, Rivera noted that a tech CEO claimed the film had been an inspiration for his company to employ a remote labour force in the Global South in order to operate robots in the Global North, and that the film has been used in pitch decks for various start-ups.
... once again bringing to mind the "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus" meme.
fn-mote 7 hours ago [-]
The oligarchs just have people to come do these tasks.
The target audience is the “regular-rich bourgeoisie”.
gigel82 6 hours ago [-]
That's an ever-dwindling section of the population. Middle class and upper middle class is going away, we're very clearly heading towards ultra-polarization.
ryandrake 6 hours ago [-]
For some reason I always get pushback for pointing it out, but we are very quickly heading towards a bifurcated world like Elysium, possibly minus the space station, where a tiny ultra-rich class lives in luxury while physically separated and protected from billions who live in squalor. We're producing everything needed to build and enforce that world!
mlmonkey 5 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, Musk is working on the Space Station part ...
selectodude 1 hours ago [-]
The meek shall inherit the Earth… but not the moon.
genewitch 36 minutes ago [-]
That's a Patton Oswalt bit; "no, haha, the meek shall inherit the earth, that's right. we're going to Mars. Bye!"
netsharc 5 hours ago [-]
So, we'll have Elysium minus the space station..
azan_ 7 hours ago [-]
How is it worse compared with workers that are currently employed by the oligarch class? It's not like they don't have people doing menial work for them right now. And automation of menial work is a good thing!
storus 3 hours ago [-]
Do you think the current AI automated menial work and left only the fun parts? It seems like the opposite, it took any fun from coding and left the drudgery of debugging code one didn't write intact.
6 hours ago [-]
deadbabe 7 hours ago [-]
Or maybe it can be used to provide job opportunities to people currently underserved, for example, if you are bound to a hospital bed you can get a VR telepresence job to make some money and help pay your medical bills.
ceejayoz 7 hours ago [-]
Gross.
gigel82 6 hours ago [-]
We're doomed if regular people have fully absorbed the propaganda to the extent that they'd think asking invalid hospital-bed-ridden people to work remotely for the uber-rich rather than fixing the tax situation so that those uber-rich can buy one less golden toilet for their private planes (and the state can provide for those poor people) is a good idea.
Schiendelman 1 hours ago [-]
The math doesn't math. You could tax all the ultra rich people at 100% and it wouldn't significantly change the social contract. The part people don't like hearing is that it's a lot of the middle class that has to pay much higher taxes if you want those guarantees of minimum living standards.
ryandrake 5 hours ago [-]
I think (hope) the poster who suggested that was being sarcastic, although it's hard to tell anymore!
traverseda 9 hours ago [-]
So the play here is obvious, use the teleoperation as training data for a more general purpose AI controller. You need that data to make a model in the first place.
What doesn't make sense to me is the cost. Yes, $8000 is probably low for this robot but it's a reasonable price range for something like this. The AI credits though? I know vision LLMs are not cheap, they're not going to run something like Llama3.2vision on every frame. Very curious about the embodied AI architecture that this is going to use, and how it can get cheap enough that it's not going to use $500/month in electricity every month.
jubilanti 2 hours ago [-]
The world of computer vision is much bigger than multimodal LLMs. You'd run an ensemble of specialized models for 3d mapping, object classification, path validation, and so on. On a raspberry pi 5 8gb you can run what you need to self drive an RC car on an obstacle track at 10 FPS.
yalogin 8 hours ago [-]
8k is cheap if laundry is fully offloaded but will a regular consumer spend 8k on a device that is not proven? I guess there is a subset of consumers that this automatically targets/caters to.
yladiz 7 hours ago [-]
At what point is it actually cheaper? Laundry isn't that expensive to do yourself, or to outsource if you really don't want to do it yourself.
stubish 24 minutes ago [-]
I doubt it will ever be cheaper than doing it yourself, like most things in life. The market is for people unable or unwilling to do it themselves.
Outsourcing can be difficult and expensive in many regions. The lack of an actual human might even be considered a benefit in some cases, such as nursing homes (although you have to weigh the benefits of human contact with the benefits of fewer humans spreading plagues).
phil21 6 hours ago [-]
I'd pay $8k tomorrow for a bot that would 100% do my laundry. That means collecting it from the various dirty clothes hampers throughout the house, bringing it to the washer and dryer, operating the washer/dryer, folding and putting clothes on hangers, and putting them back into the dresser and hung up in closets.
For a bot that just automates an in-house laundry service that washes and folds? Not very interesting since it might save maybe 60% of the time, but practically zero percent of the mental overhead.
This seems like a step towards that I suppose. My house isn't configured to make it an option even if it was a fully-baked product, but if these ever get to the point of actually working without remote teleoperation I'd certainly be in the market.
ryandrake 5 hours ago [-]
Unless I was physically disabled, elderly, or otherwise unable to do my own laundry, I couldn't even fathom paying a robot (or a maid) to do it. I can maybe understand it if you don't have a clothes washer, and had to wash your clothes manually in the sink or tub or something, but with a washing machine, the machine is already doing 95% of the work! The rest is not difficult or time-consuming. Laundry isn't heavy, and it doesn't take specialized skill or concentration to put them in the machine, start it, or remove them. Not saying your wrong for wanting something like this, but just observing how different people can be with their priorities.
hed 4 hours ago [-]
We have many kids and well, laundry is omnipresent. I would absolutely pay multiples of this to make the problem go away.
phil21 5 hours ago [-]
It's way less about the time of doing the thing, and much more about the mental overhead of having to remember to do the thing. And needing to do the thing at very inconvenient times because I forgot to do the thing or lacked motivation when I should have done the thing.
This goes for any recurring chore in my life. I love to garden, but watering plants is hell to me after the novelty wears off. I fixed this by installing an automated irrigation system. I get to do the fun bits mostly on my schedule to wind down when I feel like it (pruning, harvesting, staring at plants) and didn't sign myself up for yet another daily chore to do.
My wife is the opposite. She thrives on "chores" or routine simple items like this. She absolutely loves doing laundry to an absurd degree - kind of a zen moment in the middle of her day she can quickly spend 10 minutes here and there to get done. Same goes for cooking. I enjoy planning and creating elaborate meals I've dialed into "perfection" but take me an entire Saturday to accomplish a few times a year. She loves spending 30 minutes in the kitchen most nights to wind down after work - but really hates "big" projects of any type.
I imagine it has a lot to do with executive function. I enjoy large one-off projects (e.g. designing and installing an over the top totally overkill irrigation system) that are eventually "done" but fall apart on repetitive simple things that never end and just reset to be done X hours all over again. I like to have my "mental slate" clean when I wake up for the day, and I find I accomplish far more when I can configure my life in such a way.
As such, this robot as-is would be somewhat useless to me as I'd have to remember to hang up the clothes or walk them up the stairs to put away or whatever even with it. I'd get very little advantage for the spend.
keeganpoppen 5 hours ago [-]
really? you cannot _fathom_ the idea of paying for a robot to do something you, yourself are already capable of doing? someone should tell all these car manufacturers and the like that their cost-benefit analyses of using robots for work humans can do are completely off!
snypher 2 hours ago [-]
They're talking about a household chore and your post compares to an industrial production line. It's not like the Ford executives can walk into the laundry and assemble F-150s.
no-name-here 2 hours ago [-]
I take your point, but examples like a dishwasher or Roomba are the ones you should be using.
ryandrake 5 hours ago [-]
I do have a car, but I wouldn't pay for a robot to pick me up, carry me to the car and then chauffeur me around, unless I was physically disabled.
Buying a machine to do difficult, complex, or strenuous work is one thing. Buying a machine to load and operate the other machine seems... different.
idiotsecant 2 hours ago [-]
You have a certain number of hours remaining on earth, and that number goes down forever until it reaches zero.
Get on the cross about... doing laundry, I guess? All you want but it's not crazy to want to maximize the amount of time you get to spend with novel, meaningful experience and minimize the amount of time you spend shuffling piles of clothing from one place to another over and over among the dozens of other mundane chores.
If you have the money, why not?
Kirby64 6 hours ago [-]
You’re not replacing the outsourcing it component though, you’re replacing a maid at home doing it for you. In home laundry services are a very different experience since you don’t have to also go pick up and drop off the laundry.
A service like that can be hundreds a month, so pay off period is on the order of years… which could be worth it.
stickfigure 49 minutes ago [-]
...if the robot lasts years. Or the company, for that matter.
jimmygrapes 7 hours ago [-]
Set price too low to be truly rare luxury show off item, but high enough that expendable income is necessary for first movers. Trade in kind by "gifting" to influencer types: the pop science tech nerd ones to legitimize it by scrutinizing current downsides, the effortlessly luxurious ones to establish it as a brand, and a few mom-core ones to seed the aspiration). Develop better versions from the initial data, drop prices a few times a year via holiday sale or via model deprecation, keep current model pricing high. Develop 3rd Gen and introduce "pro" tier. Very tried and true strategy (many step omissions of course) and imo they nailed the price point for initial show off. It's not really affordable for its market but it's also not unaffordable if you consider the costs of what it would replace if it turns out to work!
prepend 8 hours ago [-]
Tesla operates vehicles for $100/month. I’m guessing whatever cloud ai this thing needs is less complicated and less money.
wat10000 7 hours ago [-]
Tesla runs its stuff on ~150 watts of local compute that's bundled into the price of the car. The $99/month is just to rent the software.
8 hours ago [-]
aliasxneo 18 minutes ago [-]
The last time I saw one of these things being promoted I found out all of the "demos" on YouTube had some dude sitting in a closest with a VR headset controlling the whole thing.
EagnaIonat 25 minutes ago [-]
Seems like something for people with more money than sense. If you could afford to drop money on this, odds on you can get a weekly maid who will do it for a fraction of the price.
Watching the videos, they have the cleanest kids in that house. The ability to move pillows 4 inches is just blowing my mind.
zokier 8 hours ago [-]
I find it very suspicious that the laundry folding segment of the video has awkward cuts of the interesting parts. Makes me question if it is actually capable of doing that
The about page claims 1000+ lbs of laundry folded every week.
tencentshill 4 hours ago [-]
That's fine. Like a robot lawnmower - if it does it every day, it doesn't need to be as fast as a person.
BizarroLand 8 hours ago [-]
I would be happy if it could put my clothes on hangers without teleoperation.
camel_gopher 2 hours ago [-]
They’ve had two of the Isaac 0 bots at the laundromat down the street from me for months. I’ve been impressed watching them evolve.
stubish 30 minutes ago [-]
Hopefully they can pull this off. Aged care is already a problem in many countries, and getting worse with an aging population and lack of workers such as cleaners. Even just laundry could keep people living in their own homes for a few extra years.
prepend 8 hours ago [-]
Seems to suffer from the dalek problem.
My laundry is upstairs and my washer is downstairs.
Also doesn’t seem to be able to start washer/dryer and transfer loads.
SOLAR_FIELDS 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah this piece of marketing got me:
> Made to fit in every home, including yours.
Unless that home has stairs
levocardia 4 hours ago [-]
I have a startup idea: I will make the robot that ferries your laundry robot up and down the stairs.
analog31 2 hours ago [-]
Not a bad idea, just a cog track that the robot grabs onto. I'd install one.
solfox 3 hours ago [-]
You could call it the El-e-vator!
JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago [-]
Yup, not mentioning weight is problematic. I also want to understand pet safety.
jvm___ 6 hours ago [-]
-Phone notification-
Your chinchilla had finished the wash cycle.
JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago [-]
I have a cat who pushed the Roomba out the door where an elk smushed it, turns on the gas fireplace when I’m out of town because he’s an environmental terrorist and stopped shitting in his box when I just put a litter robot in his room. I assume the Dalek would meet some impossible-to-predict horribly fate before the 17-year old cat does.
pkulak 22 minutes ago [-]
Those folding clothes clips are the best:
- The robot dragging one corner over itself into a sloppy mess.
- Cut.
- It’s perfectly folded.
AussieWog93 2 hours ago [-]
HN seems really, really negative this week for some reason (it maybe it's just me).
This seems cool, even if it's really just teleoperated.
manoDev 2 hours ago [-]
Selling tele-operated robots in the hopes you get AI valuation is borderline scam IMO.
This is hiring a human worker with extra steps, worse cost benefit and in a dehumanising manner.
AussieWog93 1 hours ago [-]
Their plan is surely to collect huge amounts of training data and replace the human workers.
BloondAndDoom 1 hours ago [-]
That’s how we ended up where we are. Which is effectively trading privacy to convince and cool everyday. Now the new generation doesn’t even understand what they are selling.
I get what you are saying but unless we call it what it is (which is disgusting) we will just keep getting more of it, and will normalize this bullshit. (Intrusive products are already normalized but maybe we can slow the escalation of their intrusiveness).
Even finding a non cloud-video photo uploading robot vacuum is a challenge if not impossible. Because we accept this bullshit we ended with no alternative privacy oriented design and solutions in the market. Unfortunately people don’t pay enough of a premium for real privacy.
para_parolu 10 hours ago [-]
When comes to lower part it’s always bipedal (hard to balance) or wheels (low capabilities).
Why no one makes 4-6 legs, insect like?
That seems like an easier problem to solve while gives much better mobility.
solid_fuel 9 hours ago [-]
Going from 2 to 4 legs doubles the amount of actuators required and substantially increases power consumption since you must move more mass, going to 6 compounds the problem further. In a future where we have more dense power storage and better (and cheaper!) motors, you probably will see robots with more legs. But for now, the most efficient solutions are bipedal.
Especially because this thing is already $8k, I imagine they have already done some substantial price optimization.
foxylad 29 minutes ago [-]
Conversely one leg would be cheaper and lighter. I look forward to welcoming our hopping robot overlords!
bensyverson 8 hours ago [-]
Real question: what about 3 legs? Is tripedal locomotion a viable compromise?
stubish 17 minutes ago [-]
There is likely no benefit over 2 legs if you need to step over things. And if you don't, wheels are just fine. Maybe stairs changes this.
scotty79 18 minutes ago [-]
If the robot has two legs with wheels at the ends it could combine speed and flexibility. Adding a third leg for additional stability when the robot needs it might be great. But the third leg would probably need to be between the first two and I don't think humans are mature enough to have that.
levocardia 4 hours ago [-]
Real answer: how many animals can you think of with three legs?
scotty79 17 minutes ago [-]
Kangooroos?
bensyverson 3 hours ago [-]
Ah, so it’s impossible to make a robot unless it looks like an animal
ceejayoz 10 hours ago [-]
Entomophobia/arachnophobia is far too common for giant bug-like robots in folks' bedrooms.
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
A couple hundred legs would be optimal.
shaewest 8 hours ago [-]
I wonder how much of it is training data. We can very easily get training data of 'human tasks' because humans can wear tracking suits, and those suits track bipedal movement. Anything we train off that isn't bipedal (ie dogs) don't do human tasks, don't hold anything, so a different set of requirements.
05 10 hours ago [-]
They make robot dogs, e.g. famously Boston Dynamics but many others as well. And 6 is probably overkill for price/performance increase incremental to 4. Wheels are still much more practical and you can use them as feet in hybrid designs to be able to step over obstacles but still more agile than comparable bi/quadrupeds
> The company says the robot completes Laundry Flow and Daily Reset tasks autonomously by default, but uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion.
Does that mean some random human looking at my dirty laundry in the middle of my home, the most intimate place in existence for me? No thank you.
derektank 8 hours ago [-]
Understandable reaction. That being said, thousands of people already pay for the privilege of inviting an actual human into their home every week to clean. For those people, that doesn’t seem likely to be a hurdle.
Personally, I’d probably be willing to stomach a teleoperator but what I would not be comfortable with is the company retaining images, video, and other telemetry from my condo on their servers for who knows how long.
cootsnuck 6 hours ago [-]
Yea but people invite actual humans into their homes who have names, faces, reputations, relationships, and some degree of social accountability.
If I hire someone to come into my home I can meet them, decide whether I trust them, build familiarity over time, and develop some form of reciprocity. They know whose home they’re entering, and I know who they are.
That feels very different from an anonymous person on the other side of a teleoperated robot... who may be one of many interchangeable operators, switching in and out on some unknown schedule, with no meaningful relationship to me.
Maybe I’m just the wrong audience for this. Because no way am I comfortable with anonymous strangers looking around inside my home.
0cf8612b2e1e 7 hours ago [-]
That invited stranger is probably not recording footage that will be stored for all time. There were leaks about how Tesla employees were sharing images/videos of customers.
BloondAndDoom 1 hours ago [-]
So much more of it, also strangers come and go, they are there, they knock and shout before entering a room where you might be changing clothes or taking shower.
They will not only get leaked and abused internally, it will be also sold.
They will also inevitable get hacked (storage or remote access), operators will be maybe even bribed for remote access to certain users, government will subpoena for remote access credentials and videos (assuming they are not going to be given a direct back door (similar to what Google and Meta did in the last).
Current landscape user privacy in technology is a fucking mess, unless something technically designed (E2E, no remote access etc) to be private it’ll get abused and will be used against you.
As someone who grew up and made a life out of technology I truly hate where we are with it and heavy capitalist and anti-consumer design of almost all new products.
Art9681 6 hours ago [-]
Yes but I trust the middle aged lady trying to make an honest living than what will likely be an Actually Indian from halfway across the world peeking into my home in a room full of other Indian's gossiping about the customers standards of living. If you don't care that Mr. Joy likes to teleoperate the bot especially while the wife and teenage daughter are active around the house then go for it.
5 hours ago [-]
AussieWog93 2 hours ago [-]
Honestly the Indian worker teleoperating the robot is probably also just a middle aged lady trying to make an honest living.
thelastgallon 3 hours ago [-]
Whats doable with todays technology is to give people walking robots[1] and instantly enable last mine connectivity to all metro/train/bus transit.
Bikes (and e-scooters, one wheels) are a decent solution, but you can't take them in most metros or buses. 2nd/3rd world infrastructure is pothole ridden, not even ready for bikes. Walking can take you everywhere.
This thing looks like they should package in a vacuum / floor washer into its base and something to empty/replenish it into that large base unit it docks with.
proee 3 hours ago [-]
Could work well in vacation rentals where items in the house are well defined with very specific put back places.
gpm 7 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty certain that if these were actually ready there'd be commercial uses of them first, where they see a lot more use and thus generate a lot more value than any household has laundry.
Robot operated laundry on a cruise ship or something.
stubish 8 minutes ago [-]
I think that is backwards. If you are replacing full time staff you need a system that works just as fast for the same or less money. For home use, you don't care if it takes 3 hours to make your bed or just stops for a while when waiting for a teleoperator to become available.
dmix 6 hours ago [-]
The goal at this stage is largely training data collection so it can reach widescale use. Just like self driving variations in multiple different cities, the data needed for AI robotics is broad with a million niche usecases, so it makes sense it's not strictly commercial.
They need visual recording of tele-operated robots (or humans with headset cameras) doing normal household stuff like folding laundry in real environments so it can be fully automated. Which is what funds a lot of this stuff since that training data is a goldmine right now if a company can collect enough of it.
cortesoft 7 hours ago [-]
Robots are used extensively for commercial purposes, though.
gpm 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah, but not for this or similar tasks... (unless I'm out of date?)
Working with fabric is notoriously difficult. Doubly so when we're talking random unknown pieces of fabric already sewed together by some third party and not simple rolls of it that need to be transformed in known ways into clothing.
jasonfarnon 6 hours ago [-]
I think they mean something like at laundromats. Or those large commercial laundry services should be using them behind the scenes.
tantalor 8 hours ago [-]
The product specs are pretty light on details. Weight? Speed? Capabilities? How loud is it?
SirMaster 1 hours ago [-]
Number five is alive!
SamuelAdams 5 hours ago [-]
Can this go up and down stairs? If I want my home tidied up, I want the whole home done not just one floor.
For 100 USD I can get a Roomba or Roborock for one floor and because that is so cheap I don’t mind this limitation. But for 8-10k USD I would expect this very common household feature to be solved.
slashdave 3 hours ago [-]
Thank goodness! That pillow has been in the wrong place on my sofa for weeks and I didn't know what to do!
maxdo 7 hours ago [-]
So that laundry task is not possible due to wheels at least in my house. You need to Cary this guy everywhere lol
sandcat_ 4 hours ago [-]
That is one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while! And the first time something akin to uncanny valley has gotten me. The way it slowly raises out of its dock. The arms just hanging there in the photo at the bottom. The weirdly broad 'smile' it seems to have (it's just the lip of the head I think, but it looks like a very creepy smile to me). Its slow methodical movements. The way it wheeled past that doorway. Eurghh. Is it just me? I feel like I could never relax with this in my home. Like I'll turn around to find it inches away from me, watching.
levocardia 4 hours ago [-]
I was actually waiting for it to pull out a butcher knife and reveal the landing page is actually a promo for a techno-horror film.
krupan 8 hours ago [-]
Are these the same guys that were trashing airbnbs testing the robots?
I'll buy a robot that can put fitted sheets and fold every piece of laundry no matter how contorted/inside-out it is. Till then, they're just gimmicks. Also, it should have legs.
nelox 2 hours ago [-]
No stairs, no go.
storus 5 hours ago [-]
This looks like something from 80s sci-fi and far behind what Unitree has.
johndenverscar 10 hours ago [-]
I wonder how this thing would hold up against a dog
tibbon 7 hours ago [-]
Soooo close, but I have a 4 floor house. Talk to me when it does stairs.
tedggh 6 hours ago [-]
It looks terribly depressed, lonely and sad.
the_sleaze_ 4 hours ago [-]
"The first 10 million [pounds of laundry] were the worst, after that everything went downhill"
- Marvin the household laundry bot
wayeq 5 hours ago [-]
at least we have that in common
rvnx 10 hours ago [-]
Feels like they cloned the vacuum cleaner Roborock Saros Z70, and attached the arms to a pole instead of the base.
Especially the arm clamp is the same shape, the actions are practically the same (take object and put in basket, teleoperation with live camera).
The type of thing you have lot of fun for 5 minutes.
Cheaper Unitree robots that starts at 4,900 USD are impressive in comparison.
Weave says the robot blends autonomy with teleoperation (remote assistance by a Weave specialist) to guarantee that we complete every fold
Quite ridiculous. For 449 USD / month couldn't you just hire someone to clean your whole place and even sort your clothes, empty the trash, etc ?
fragmede 10 hours ago [-]
You can, but who are you to stop people that don't trust a human to not steal their shit so would rather have a remote controlled robot do it though?
TurdF3rguson 7 hours ago [-]
It's tricky but I'm betting it's possible to teleoperate sending all their jewelry to the philippines.
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
> a Weave specialist
Lol. Folding engineer.
Art9681 6 hours ago [-]
"... teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion."
NOPE. Close tab. If this does not work without an internet connection then it's DOA. I should only have to connect it for software updates. Other than that, the bot is offline, period.
No? Think of a malicious actor hacking into one of these things and using your favorite kitchen knife against you while you sleep. I want a robot where the probability of that occurring is zero.
throwaway173738 5 hours ago [-]
Or unlocking your doors while you’re on vacation. If there’s a way to operate it remotely then it will get operated remotely.
ryandrake 5 hours ago [-]
You shouldn't have to connect it to the Internet, period, even for software updates (SDCards exist). Internet connected in-home devices with cameras and (presumably) microphones = privacy disaster, spyware and telemetry. NOPE for me, too.
pupppet 10 hours ago [-]
RadioShack where are you, you should be selling these.
uriahlight 4 hours ago [-]
If it needs a remote hooman operator at any point, it's an absolute no go for me. Dead on arrival.
t1234s 10 hours ago [-]
So you will have low-paid Africans from 3rd world countries tele-operating a robots in rich peoples houses doing chores?
fugaziboutit 5 hours ago [-]
AI = Actually Indenturedservantsfromthirdworldcountries
prepend 8 hours ago [-]
Better than local servants doing chores.
unselect5917 7 hours ago [-]
Why is that better?
plasticeagle 6 hours ago [-]
Slavery is better when you don't have to think about it, I suppose.
treis 5 hours ago [-]
It's not slavery when you get paid for it and can quit
pessimizer 1 hours ago [-]
Slaves generally get room and board, and always have the opportunity to quit (although the other option is often death, so slavery is preferable.)
I'm not trying to be facetious, I'm trying to tell you that your criteria are not meaningful, and you're pretending like they're obvious. It's why many US slaves moved directly from slavery into sharecropping for the same masters. The only thing that changed was the paperwork. Now they were renters, who could quit (with no assets and no means to feed themselves.)
unselect5917 1 hours ago [-]
I once ham-fistedly tried to allude to a similar concept. That slaves were at least "kept" while today's wage slaves have more responsibility, and de facto less freedom due to 'The Matrix' that is our financial and legal system that benefits so few.
We have lords of land. A monetary system based mostly on trickery hidden behind boring math that inexorably erodes the purchasing power of what we receive as compensation for our finite time alive.
So let's just jump to the interesting bit: how do we fix it? Got any ideas?
the way it peeks over the couch in the landing page video :'D
kyleee 4 hours ago [-]
Is there an add on / subscription / higher tier where it joins in?
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
Exactly. With special safeguards to prevent them from "exfiltrating" any of your property or information with the help of accomplices on the ground, online services, or other clever hacks.
xpct 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, that's the path we're on. It may start with poor eastern Europeans, then gradually move to Africans who tele-operate on eastern European homes.
sandworm101 11 hours ago [-]
No legs? Call it what it is: Dalek
twoWhlsGud 10 hours ago [-]
Indeed - I look forward to the spa version of this that runs around yelling "Exfoliate!, Exfoliate!" : )
8 hours ago [-]
emsign 6 hours ago [-]
I put my clothes into the clothes bin directly without using the floor as a temporary storage space.
hettygreen 10 hours ago [-]
I'd love to own one of these!
It could fold my laundry while I'm busy working from home as a teleoperator for Weave Robots.
loloquwowndueo 10 hours ago [-]
They charge you for the privilege of folding your own laundry. Brilliant.
icepush 8 hours ago [-]
But you would also be getting paid. Literally arbitrage laundering.
esafak 10 hours ago [-]
The first thing that jumped out at me is its form factor. It is easier to engineer (cheaper) and less threatening than a bipedal robot. The drawback, of course, is that it is less mobile.
BizarroLand 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I would consider getting one for my 94 year old grandmother, but there are 2 steps between her bedroom and the laundry room, and this can't cut it.
michelb 10 hours ago [-]
I mean its a start to getting something to market? It just looks way behind the chinese models that are being delivered.
XorNot 4 hours ago [-]
Honestly if this actually worked to fold laundry, teleoperation or not, I'd buy it.
Just prove to me it's deaf. I don't care who sees me naked that's their problem not mine.
Thanks! we've made that the main link and put the submitted link in the toptext.
Stitch4223 10 hours ago [-]
Thanks! This should be the link, or to their announcement.
The article page on runtimewire is slop with a lot of distracting design elements and even a “WHY IT MATTERS” title, which is just cringe.
redsocksfan45 10 hours ago [-]
[dead]
3fffss 3 hours ago [-]
[dead]
xpct 10 hours ago [-]
Once again, the text is riddled with LLM'isms. Is this the new norm nowadays? Looking at OP's submission history, it's evident that they are utilizing HN for SEO farming.
A much more valuable discussion would be centered around the company's own website, which contains the same information, and doesn't require an LLM mediator: https://www.weaverobotics.com/isaac-1
ryanmerket 3 hours ago [-]
The post actually has important context that you won't find on the polished launch page.
NDlurker 10 hours ago [-]
Teleoperation looks like a great business opportunity. Hire voyeurs for cheap and sell to exhibitionists.
m12k 10 hours ago [-]
Connecting voyeurs and exhibitionists is already a great business idea - don’t know why we need to add robots to the mix.
pclmulqdq 10 hours ago [-]
That business idea is already taken. It’s OnlyFans and it has more revenue than a top 10 company on the US stock market.
NDlurker 10 hours ago [-]
This will clean a home while the owner is away and be a teledildonics platform while they're home.
7 hours ago [-]
rasz 4 hours ago [-]
Forget voyeurs, operators will scan for valuables and sell that data along with owner schedule for some extra money on the side.
johnnyApplePRNG 10 hours ago [-]
Everything about this product looks terrible.
Must operate on a perfectly flat surface. My roomba could probably handle a larger carpet curb than that top-heavy thing.
Head and eyes appear to be at human crotch level for some reason... gross.
What a waste of engineering talent.
8 hours ago [-]
nh23423fefe 11 hours ago [-]
Surrogate slavery is going to be a large business one day.
If you are telling me that one day I'll have a robot that cooks, cleans, is a personal assistant, a therapist. Eventually it'll be a chauffeur, babysitter, and obviously sex slave.
Why wouldn't i pay 50000 for that, besides the obvious "you are a creep" like why do I care when it's coming and market forces are going to make it an indistinguishable substitute human a la Joi from blade runner?
ifdefdebug 11 hours ago [-]
Because your sex slave uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion?
ceejayoz 10 hours ago [-]
That's gonna be a bonus for some people.
dvh 10 hours ago [-]
Is "task completion" an euphemism for "happy ending"?
pavel_lishin 10 hours ago [-]
The cylinder must not be harmed.
pseudony 10 hours ago [-]
Someone or thing to help with chores would be great.
But abject exploitation? Sex slave, even? I should hope we can find a little decency within ourselves..
A robot babysitter sounds like a suggestion made by somebody who doesn't have kids.
throw310822 10 hours ago [-]
> a robot that cooks, cleans, is a personal assistant, a therapist. Eventually it'll be a chauffeur, babysitter, and obviously sex slave.
Used to be called "a wife", before emancipation.
Seriously though, the future is made of human beings more and more isolated from each other because technology will give us all that we used to get from other people, with none of the annoyances. Each the king or queen of their solipsistic kingdom.
ambicapter 9 hours ago [-]
Separate people are easier to control, collective action is anathema to the ruling class.
t1234s 8 hours ago [-]
This is like a demo iPhone 1 where Optimis will be the iPhone 17 Pro
ElijahLynn 10 hours ago [-]
2027 will be the year of the robots.
I also saw Tesla is ramping up to make millions of Optimus robots. And Amazon bought Fauna robotics which I predict we will start seeing "last 100 ft" deliveries soon. Amazon's Rivian packmobile will pull up to a block and 5 Fauna robots (they are short) will jump out and start delivering packages to the neighborhood.
The robots are coming...
joelthelion 10 hours ago [-]
Do we have any evidence that Tesla is actually working on manufacturing millions of robots?
kube-system 9 hours ago [-]
They cancelled the production of two vehicles, announced that those lines will be retooled for the robots , and they have jobs recs out. Who knows if they will be able to sell millions but it doesn't sound like they're not trying.
They can always sell them to SpaceX, those guys have lots of money.
jppope 7 hours ago [-]
yeah, the production lines are in Reno, NV
fragmede 10 hours ago [-]
I mean, it's entirely possible that Elon Musk is lying about the whole humanoid Tesla robot thing and it's a total utter scam and that everything online is just cgi, but let's pretend he's not that much of a scam artist.
Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
Why an AI company cleaned my New York City apartment for free
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwerjy20kyo
This will almost certainly depend on the customer and residence. I don't think subscription pricing will be fair, but it can at least be budgeted for out of pensions and such for the people needing to pay for assistance.
EDIT: Jeez, it looks like that's an 11 years old thread. Time does indeed fly.
EDIT 2: The source for the claim is paywalled, but this is how the Cultural impact chapter of the movie's Wikipedia page closes:
> In 2025, Rivera noted that a tech CEO claimed the film had been an inspiration for his company to employ a remote labour force in the Global South in order to operate robots in the Global North, and that the film has been used in pitch decks for various start-ups.
... once again bringing to mind the "At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus" meme.
The target audience is the “regular-rich bourgeoisie”.
What doesn't make sense to me is the cost. Yes, $8000 is probably low for this robot but it's a reasonable price range for something like this. The AI credits though? I know vision LLMs are not cheap, they're not going to run something like Llama3.2vision on every frame. Very curious about the embodied AI architecture that this is going to use, and how it can get cheap enough that it's not going to use $500/month in electricity every month.
Outsourcing can be difficult and expensive in many regions. The lack of an actual human might even be considered a benefit in some cases, such as nursing homes (although you have to weigh the benefits of human contact with the benefits of fewer humans spreading plagues).
For a bot that just automates an in-house laundry service that washes and folds? Not very interesting since it might save maybe 60% of the time, but practically zero percent of the mental overhead.
This seems like a step towards that I suppose. My house isn't configured to make it an option even if it was a fully-baked product, but if these ever get to the point of actually working without remote teleoperation I'd certainly be in the market.
This goes for any recurring chore in my life. I love to garden, but watering plants is hell to me after the novelty wears off. I fixed this by installing an automated irrigation system. I get to do the fun bits mostly on my schedule to wind down when I feel like it (pruning, harvesting, staring at plants) and didn't sign myself up for yet another daily chore to do.
My wife is the opposite. She thrives on "chores" or routine simple items like this. She absolutely loves doing laundry to an absurd degree - kind of a zen moment in the middle of her day she can quickly spend 10 minutes here and there to get done. Same goes for cooking. I enjoy planning and creating elaborate meals I've dialed into "perfection" but take me an entire Saturday to accomplish a few times a year. She loves spending 30 minutes in the kitchen most nights to wind down after work - but really hates "big" projects of any type.
I imagine it has a lot to do with executive function. I enjoy large one-off projects (e.g. designing and installing an over the top totally overkill irrigation system) that are eventually "done" but fall apart on repetitive simple things that never end and just reset to be done X hours all over again. I like to have my "mental slate" clean when I wake up for the day, and I find I accomplish far more when I can configure my life in such a way.
As such, this robot as-is would be somewhat useless to me as I'd have to remember to hang up the clothes or walk them up the stairs to put away or whatever even with it. I'd get very little advantage for the spend.
Buying a machine to do difficult, complex, or strenuous work is one thing. Buying a machine to load and operate the other machine seems... different.
Get on the cross about... doing laundry, I guess? All you want but it's not crazy to want to maximize the amount of time you get to spend with novel, meaningful experience and minimize the amount of time you spend shuffling piles of clothing from one place to another over and over among the dozens of other mundane chores.
If you have the money, why not?
A service like that can be hundreds a month, so pay off period is on the order of years… which could be worth it.
Watching the videos, they have the cleanest kids in that house. The ability to move pillows 4 inches is just blowing my mind.
The about page claims 1000+ lbs of laundry folded every week.
My laundry is upstairs and my washer is downstairs.
Also doesn’t seem to be able to start washer/dryer and transfer loads.
> Made to fit in every home, including yours.
Unless that home has stairs
Your chinchilla had finished the wash cycle.
- The robot dragging one corner over itself into a sloppy mess. - Cut. - It’s perfectly folded.
This seems cool, even if it's really just teleoperated.
This is hiring a human worker with extra steps, worse cost benefit and in a dehumanising manner.
I get what you are saying but unless we call it what it is (which is disgusting) we will just keep getting more of it, and will normalize this bullshit. (Intrusive products are already normalized but maybe we can slow the escalation of their intrusiveness).
Even finding a non cloud-video photo uploading robot vacuum is a challenge if not impossible. Because we accept this bullshit we ended with no alternative privacy oriented design and solutions in the market. Unfortunately people don’t pay enough of a premium for real privacy.
Especially because this thing is already $8k, I imagine they have already done some substantial price optimization.
Does that mean some random human looking at my dirty laundry in the middle of my home, the most intimate place in existence for me? No thank you.
Personally, I’d probably be willing to stomach a teleoperator but what I would not be comfortable with is the company retaining images, video, and other telemetry from my condo on their servers for who knows how long.
If I hire someone to come into my home I can meet them, decide whether I trust them, build familiarity over time, and develop some form of reciprocity. They know whose home they’re entering, and I know who they are.
That feels very different from an anonymous person on the other side of a teleoperated robot... who may be one of many interchangeable operators, switching in and out on some unknown schedule, with no meaningful relationship to me.
Maybe I’m just the wrong audience for this. Because no way am I comfortable with anonymous strangers looking around inside my home.
Bikes (and e-scooters, one wheels) are a decent solution, but you can't take them in most metros or buses. 2nd/3rd world infrastructure is pothole ridden, not even ready for bikes. Walking can take you everywhere.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G3oP9T5LQ64
Robot operated laundry on a cruise ship or something.
They need visual recording of tele-operated robots (or humans with headset cameras) doing normal household stuff like folding laundry in real environments so it can be fully automated. Which is what funds a lot of this stuff since that training data is a goldmine right now if a company can collect enough of it.
Working with fabric is notoriously difficult. Doubly so when we're talking random unknown pieces of fabric already sewed together by some third party and not simple rolls of it that need to be transformed in known ways into clothing.
For 100 USD I can get a Roomba or Roborock for one floor and because that is so cheap I don’t mind this limitation. But for 8-10k USD I would expect this very common household feature to be solved.
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2026/05/28/sf-startup-secretly-testin...
[2] https://www.bot.co/
- Marvin the household laundry bot
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x9TdqrvDHWY
Especially the arm clamp is the same shape, the actions are practically the same (take object and put in basket, teleoperation with live camera).
The type of thing you have lot of fun for 5 minutes.
Cheaper Unitree robots that starts at 4,900 USD are impressive in comparison.
Quite ridiculous. For 449 USD / month couldn't you just hire someone to clean your whole place and even sort your clothes, empty the trash, etc ?Lol. Folding engineer.
NOPE. Close tab. If this does not work without an internet connection then it's DOA. I should only have to connect it for software updates. Other than that, the bot is offline, period.
No? Think of a malicious actor hacking into one of these things and using your favorite kitchen knife against you while you sleep. I want a robot where the probability of that occurring is zero.
I'm not trying to be facetious, I'm trying to tell you that your criteria are not meaningful, and you're pretending like they're obvious. It's why many US slaves moved directly from slavery into sharecropping for the same masters. The only thing that changed was the paperwork. Now they were renters, who could quit (with no assets and no means to feed themselves.)
We have lords of land. A monetary system based mostly on trickery hidden behind boring math that inexorably erodes the purchasing power of what we receive as compensation for our finite time alive.
So let's just jump to the interesting bit: how do we fix it? Got any ideas?
* Not safe for feminists
It could fold my laundry while I'm busy working from home as a teleoperator for Weave Robots.
Just prove to me it's deaf. I don't care who sees me naked that's their problem not mine.
The article page on runtimewire is slop with a lot of distracting design elements and even a “WHY IT MATTERS” title, which is just cringe.
A much more valuable discussion would be centered around the company's own website, which contains the same information, and doesn't require an LLM mediator: https://www.weaverobotics.com/isaac-1
Must operate on a perfectly flat surface. My roomba could probably handle a larger carpet curb than that top-heavy thing.
Head and eyes appear to be at human crotch level for some reason... gross.
What a waste of engineering talent.
If you are telling me that one day I'll have a robot that cooks, cleans, is a personal assistant, a therapist. Eventually it'll be a chauffeur, babysitter, and obviously sex slave.
Why wouldn't i pay 50000 for that, besides the obvious "you are a creep" like why do I care when it's coming and market forces are going to make it an indistinguishable substitute human a la Joi from blade runner?
But abject exploitation? Sex slave, even? I should hope we can find a little decency within ourselves..
Could it become true ?
Well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_fetishism we live in the future already
Used to be called "a wife", before emancipation.
Seriously though, the future is made of human beings more and more isolated from each other because technology will give us all that we used to get from other people, with none of the annoyances. Each the king or queen of their solipsistic kingdom.
I also saw Tesla is ramping up to make millions of Optimus robots. And Amazon bought Fauna robotics which I predict we will start seeing "last 100 ft" deliveries soon. Amazon's Rivian packmobile will pull up to a block and 5 Fauna robots (they are short) will jump out and start delivering packages to the neighborhood.
The robots are coming...
https://www.tesla.com/careers/search/?region=5&site=US&state...
https://www.reddit.com/r/robotics/comments/1ph3scw/tesla_opt...
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-optimus-robots-bartend...