At CES this year, humanoid robots appeared to be closer than ever to moving into our homes. LG introduced CLOiD, a household robot it says can handle chores like preparing food and loading the washing machine. SwitchBot showed off the Onero H1, another home helper built to tackle everyday tasks, and Boston Dynamics, WIRobotics, Zeroth, and others debuted even more impressive humanoids.
Advances in robotics and AI have made robots smarter and more capable than ever. The question is whether they’re capable enough to do our chores. We already have robots that vacuum our floors and mow our lawns — but there’s one job they haven’t mastered: laundry.
Laundry is a complex, multistep chore many of us would happily hand off to a robot: collecting, sorting, loading, unloading, folding, and carrying. At CES, nearly every company claimed its household robot could handle it, with demos showing bots loading washers and folding clothes.
The Verge decided to try and put these promises to the test on the show floor to see if these robots are really as capable as they claim, or if the future of smart home robotics actually lies in the smaller, single-purpose machines that were also everywhere at CES.
Join senior smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy in her quest to see how close we are to a robot that can do her laundry. Along the way, she talks to the president of robot vacuum giant Roborock, the CEO of the newest humanoid startup, Zeroth, and other experts in the robot space to find out whether the humanoid trend is inevitable or just classic CES vaporware.
Watch the video and tell us: How much do you actually want a robot to do for you?