ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

A San Francisco start-up is charging $30 an hour for humanoid robots to clean people's houses.

Tau Robotics claims its machines can vacuum floors, wipe down kitchen counters and even take out the rubbish. They can also clean up spills and pick up any stray items from the floor.

Founder Alex Koch says the aim of the service is to expand access to home cleaning. "Many of our initial customers were people who didn't have house cleaners, so it mainly just makes the market bigger," he said.

The robots are not yet fully autonomous: instead they are tele-operated by human controllers who work remotely and control all cleaning tasks while the onboard AI manages real-time physical balance and motor co-ordination.

Koch acknowledges the limitations of his technology but adds that the robots are perfectly capable of handling some household chores.

"Vacuum cleaning for example, that's working pretty well already," he said. "And wiping the kitchen counter - that's also pretty doable."

The programme has a waiting list and is only available on an invitation-only basis. The pricing model reflects the fact that the robots are continually gathering data via on-board cameras which will be used to train the fully autonomous robots of the future.

A similar model is currently being adopted in New York where AI company Micro AGI is offering the services of human cleaners for free. Cameras in the cleaners' caps are continuously gathering data which will be used to train tomorrow's cleaning robots.