At this year’s CES, humanoid robots appeared closer than ever to entering our homes. LG introduced CLOiD, a home robot that it says can handle tasks like preparing food and loading items into the washing machine. Switchbot showed off the Onero H1, another home assistant designed to handle everyday tasks, and Boston Dynamics, Virobotics, Zeroth and others introduced even more impressive humanoids.
Advances in robotics and AI have made robots smarter and more capable than ever before. The question is, are they capable? Sufficient To do our work. We already have robots that vacuum our floors and mow our lawns — but there’s one task they haven’t mastered: laundry.
Laundry is a complex, multi-step task that many of us would happily delegate to a robot: collecting, sorting, loading, unloading, folding, and carrying. At CES, almost every company claimed its home robot could handle it, with demos showing bots loading washers and folding clothes.
The Verge We decided to try testing these promises on the show floor to see if these robots are really as capable as they claim, or if the future of smart home robotics really lies in the small, single-purpose machines that were everywhere even at CES.
Join senior smart home reviewer Jennifer Pattison Tuohy on her quest to see how close we are to a robot that can wash their clothes. 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 field to find out whether the humanoid trend is inevitable or just classic CES vaporware.
Watch the video and tell us: How much work would you really want a robot to do?
<a href