Robot Cleaners Hit SF Homes at $30 an Hour, But Doubts Linger

Tau Robotics started sending humanoid robots into San Francisco homes in late July for $30-an-hour cleaning visits, ABC7 San Francisco reported Friday. The invite-only service is still building its waitlist. Tau said its robots vacuum, wipe counters, empty trash and clear light clutter, but skip ladders, outdoor work, biohazards and anything involving medication or cash. Tau's service policy also requires an adult to stay home for the full visit.

The robots are not autonomous. One trained operator controls each robot in real time, watching the live camera feed for the duration of a visit. Every operator is a background-checked employee working on-site from Tau's own San Francisco facility, according to Tau's disclosure. AI assists with balance and motor control while the operator drives the robot, a setup Tau Co-Founder and CEO Alex Koch has described as "conceptually similar to autonomous driving," Cryptopolitan reported.

In May, San Francisco startup Gatsby launched a competing service that runs autonomously, with no live human operator, at a flat $150 per visit regardless of apartment size, a price Gatsby says roughly matches what a human cleaning service already charges in the city. Tau's robots are cheaper and always supervised; Gatsby's are more expensive and, the company says, fully hands-off.

Not everyone is convinced the timing works for either approach. Ken Goldberg, a UC Berkeley engineering professor with 40 years in the field, told ABC7 he doubts the technology is ready. "I really think it is too early," he said. "I would be very surprised if these could do anything close to a useful job of cleaning a house. So, being able to pick up objects off the floor is even still a challenge for robots today. And being able to sweep and wipe out areas of, you know, counters and underneath things, that is very, very difficult."

The robots run on hardware built by Unitree, the Chinese robotics manufacturer, with Tau designing the cameras, claws and onboard computer in-house, Cryptopolitan reported. That choice lands awkwardly: the same week Tau launched, the Federal Communications Commission barred new U.S. imports of Chinese-made humanoid and quadruped robots over unpatched security vulnerabilities. The ban does not revoke authorization for robots already in the country, so Tau's current fleet is unaffected, but it raises a question about how the company would import additional units to scale beyond its current handful of robots.