Humanoid robots now cleaning homes in San Francisco for $30

A San Francisco startup is bringing humanoid robots into homes and offices for cleaning jobs, offering the service at $30 per hour as it tests whether machines can take on routine household work.

The company Tau Robotics has started accepting applications from select customers in San Francisco, where its humanoid robots are being deployed for cleaning tasks under the supervision of remote human operators.

According to CEO Hans Koch, today’s artificial intelligence is not advanced enough to let a humanoid robot clean an entire home independently. Instead, each robot is guided by a human operator from a centralized location, with AI assisting in navigation and task execution.

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Videos released by the company show the robots vacuuming, wiping surfaces, and carrying out other cleaning duties. One sped-up clip captures a robot stepping out of a minivan before entering a customer’s property to begin work.

Koch said the goal is not only to develop the technology but also to make home cleaning more affordable and widely available over time. He acknowledged that the robots are still limited in what they can do but argued they are already capable of handling certain everyday chores.

Customers are required to remain on-site during the cleaning session while remote operators control the robots and adapt to the layout of each home or office. The company says the system does not rely on pre-programmed routines, allowing operators and AI to respond to different environments in real time.

The service is also drawing scrutiny from robotics experts. Ken Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley with decades of experience in robotics, questioned whether humanoid robots are ready to handle the complexity of household cleaning.

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Beyond technical concerns, the service has sparked debate over privacy and practicality. Because remote operators rely on live video feeds, all cleaning sessions are recorded, with the footage used to train Tau Robotics’ AI models. Some observers have welcomed the hybrid human-AI approach as a practical first step toward home robotics, while others argue they would rather hire a human cleaner for the same hourly rate. Privacy advocates have also raised concerns about continuous video recording inside homes, and some people say the human-like appearance of the robots creates an unsettling “uncanny valley” effect.

Despite the skepticism, Tau Robotics sees the current service as an early stage in a much larger ambition. The company ultimately hopes to build affordable humanoid robots capable of cleaning entire homes with minimal human intervention, a development it believes could reshape the home services industry.