For decades, science fiction has promised us a future where humanoid robots handle the drudgery of domestic life. Unlike hoverboards or self-tying sneakers, a robot housekeeper always felt just out of reach. But this year, the future seems to be arriving - albeit with a limp.
At CES, the show floor was crawling with human-shaped bots, several of them pitched for home use. US-based 1X has already deployed its $20,000 Neo robot into homes to perform housework (with a generous helping of remote human assistance). This week at the IFA tech show in Berlin, about half a dozen humanoids, mostly from China, will strut down a catwalk to demonstrate their alarmingly rapid skill acquisition, as if they're planning to backflip straight into our living rooms.
But do we actually need hulking 170-pound mechanical multitaskers that might accidentally flatten the family dog with one misplaced step? I've spent the last few years testing robots in my own home: vacuums that sweep and mop, bots that mow the lawn, scoop cat litter, and even cook dinner - each a specialist in its own narrow domain. I've also invited Amazon's Astro and companion bots like Ecovacs' LilMilo, SwitchBot's Kata, and Intuition Robotics' ElliQ into my space.
Two truths have emerged from my domestic robot menagerie. First, a fully humanoid housekeeper is wildly impractical. Unlike factories, where humanoids have found modest success, homes are chaotic, unpredictable places. And most homes have stairs. To conquer stairs, a robot needs either flight capabilities or legs that can exert serious force - neither of which screams 'safe for indoor use.' Just ask Ring about its perpetually postponed Always Home flying camera.
Second, tech history is littered with gadgets that tried to do everything and failed at most of it. We don't need an overpriced jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none. At CES, I walked the Las Vegas show floor carrying a bottle of laundry detergent, challenging every humanoid I met to open it. Not one succeeded. The universal response: 'It needs to learn that first.'
So what's the smarter path? A robot brain - an AI-powered smart home controller that orchestrates the autonomous devices we already own. Instead of one expensive machine attempting all tasks, imagine a proactive home that manages itself: dispatching the robot vacuum when the dog spills his kibble, starting the washing machine when energy rates drop, or sending the lawnmower out when the grass needs a trim.
Today's smart homes rely on command-and-control or user-programmed routines. A robot brain could reason autonomously and adapt to life's unpredictabilities. Samsung's Ballie robot explored this idea (and never launched), while LG's CLOiD humanoid shows more promise. Amazon's Alexa Plus and Google's Gemini for Home are also chasing this vision, though no one is close.
This week at IFA, Tuya - a global AI cloud platform provider - is unveiling Doova, an AI home companion aimed at seniors living alone. Doova is a short, round, armless robot on wheels with 'dynamic facial expressions.' It can track its owner, offer emergency assistance, open live video calls with family if the user doesn't respond, provide 'conversational companionship,' and control lights, curtains, and kitchen and bathroom appliances. No price or release date yet, but it's coming.
Doova doesn't need to fold laundry to be useful; it understands the home's state, connects people to it, and manages existing machines. But it highlights a major hurdle: robots need cameras to navigate, and cameras in homes raise serious privacy flags.
Still, there's appeal in a robot brain that can also handle physical chores - picking up clutter, loading the dishwasher, tasks requiring hands. I tested a robot vacuum with an arm meant to grab shoes and socks; it mostly failed, but the concept is sound.
The happy medium between a menacing full-size humanoid and an armless companion is a wheeled bot with arms. LG's CLOiD fits this mold: a wheeled smart home controller with arms boasting 7 degrees of freedom and five individually actuated fingers per hand. At CES, I watched it fold clothes, retrieve items from the fridge, and load a washing machine - slowly, but successfully. It didn't attempt to unscrew a detergent bottle (presumably it uses pods).
This week, LG announced it's training hundreds of CLOiDs at a new data factory in Seoul, where they'll practice cleaning tasks in a home environment. By year-end, that training will feed roughly 100,000 hours - equivalent to 12 years - into its robot foundation model, built on Nvidia Cosmos open-world models.
Clearly, home robots are on the horizon. But we don't need a robot butler catering to our every whim - few could afford one anyway. The future isn't one super-bot; it's a team of specialized machines coordinated by a robot brain. And if that brain happens to include hands that can open my laundry detergent, so much the better.