by ceejayoz
11 subcomments
- > The company says the robot completes Laundry Flow and Daily Reset tasks autonomously by default, but uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion.
Suspiciously absent: a rough idea of what percentage of tasks need the assistance.
- "Is Isaac 1 teleoperated? Isaac 1 is autonomous for Laundry Flow and Daily Reset by default, with teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee we complete tasks."
Offline and autonomous or never in my house.
by traverseda
7 subcomments
- So the play here is obvious, use the teleoperation as training data for a more general purpose AI controller. You need that data to make a model in the first place.
What doesn't make sense to me is the cost. Yes, $8000 is probably low for this robot but it's a reasonable price range for something like this. The AI credits though? I know vision LLMs are not cheap, they're not going to run something like Llama3.2vision on every frame. Very curious about the embodied AI architecture that this is going to use, and how it can get cheap enough that it's not going to use $500/month in electricity every month.
by danpalmer
3 subcomments
- > Handles loaded hampers
What does it mean "handles"? It doesn't say it puts on a wash, but that's what I'd want. I can only assume they're vague because it doesn't do anything useful.
> Makes beds
A robot the height of a child makes a double bed with sheet, duvet, and pillows? I highly doubt it could reach.
> Isaac 1 is autonomous for Laundry Flow and Daily Reset by default, with teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee we complete tasks.
That's a lot of words to say "a person will drive it around your home". What sort of insurance do they have for that person breaking something in your home? What audit trail do they have for the operators?
- While I find robots cool they just don't literally "fit" in an average flat or house I lived in majority of my life. In order to squeeze one more member into your average household the lil thing needs to justify refurbishing the entire place so it can actually operate there without being a nuisance. Reminds of how my relative spent quite a bit of time making sure an old house being renovated was flat enough so automatic vacuum cleaner could traverse room to room without getting stuck. A humanoid robot is larger still. I can see them being adopted by businesses first though.
- I find it very suspicious that the laundry folding segment of the video has awkward cuts of the interesting parts. Makes me question if it is actually capable of doing that
- Seems to suffer from the dalek problem.
My laundry is upstairs and my washer is downstairs.
Also doesn’t seem to be able to start washer/dryer and transfer loads.
- This seems to be a redux of the 1x play (which was panned across the internet after the WSJ review).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3c4mQty_so
The hardware for these machines have been capable of household tasks for atleast 2 decades.
Here's PR1 cleaning up a room,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7JH3UWO6I0
The issue is not even teleop as a product. The issue none of these companies talk about is one of state-reset. Even a teleop-ed robot comes nowhere near the dexterity of a human - as the Joanna Stern review of 1x shows: 10 mins to load a dishwasher, 5 mins to get a glass of water, body coming the way of a fridge door, irrecoverable breakdowns every 30 mins...
Consider what happens if it drops some glassware or spills liquids on a carpet in addition (or worse does something stupid with the kitchen appliances). The teleop guy in Phillipines or India can't hop on a plane to fix this.
This 'environment reset' problem is at the core of RL - there are no solutions for this yet, only workarounds.
by chakintosh
1 subcomments
- From the looks of it, you're gonna need one robot per floor. On the one hand, it's refreshing seeing a robot that's not a creepy humanoid, on the other, how is it gonna deal with steps and stairs ?
- /me gets tempted then looks at his Roomba gathering dust, on itself, for years now.
It's great in theory. I hate chores... but those things don't work. They work-ish in some ideal cases but a house, even a sorted one, is a mess. You have cables, clothes on the floor, etc.
Cleaning up is a menial task but it's not a trivial one, both mechanically and cognitively speaking.
It won't work.
by camel_gopher
1 subcomments
- They’ve had two of the Isaac 0 bots at the laundromat down the street from me for months. I’ve been impressed watching them evolve.
by andsoitis
4 subcomments
- > with teleoperation assistance
Privacy nightmare. Bunch of random, low-paid operators looking around inside my home. No thanks!
by para_parolu
7 subcomments
- When comes to lower part it’s always bipedal (hard to balance) or wheels (low capabilities).
Why no one makes 4-6 legs, insect like?
That seems like an easier problem to solve while gives much better mobility.
- Man the design of this thing! Looks like they raided an old Nintendo warehouse and found a moss-covered Robb!
That might sound like a criticism to some, but rest assured it's meant as praise!
Who wouldn't want a moss-covered Robb cleaning their house?
by ifdefdebug
1 subcomments
- > The company says the robot completes Laundry Flow and Daily Reset tasks autonomously by default, but uses teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion.
Does that mean some random human looking at my dirty laundry in the middle of my home, the most intimate place in existence for me? No thank you.
by SamuelAdams
0 subcomment
- Can this go up and down stairs? If I want my home tidied up, I want the whole home done not just one floor.
For 100 USD I can get a Roomba or Roborock for one floor and because that is so cheap I don’t mind this limitation. But for 8-10k USD I would expect this very common household feature to be solved.
- So much of housing in my area is high density now taking the form of row housing with multiple levels. Other homes have laundry in the basement, bedrooms on a second level. Sadly Isaac isn't going to be as useful if you have stairs.
by solarity_studio
0 subcomment
- "Isaac 1 is autonomous for Laundry Flow and Daily Reset by default, with teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee we complete tasks."
I'll pass lol
- I'm pretty certain that if these were actually ready there'd be commercial uses of them first, where they see a lot more use and thus generate a lot more value than any household has laundry.
Robot operated laundry on a cruise ship or something.
by jonplackett
1 subcomments
- $8000 up front + $100 a month
Assuming it lasts maybe 4 years that’s $61 a week.
So you could just hire a human cleaner to come once a week and have them do a way better job.
Or if you prefer to compare to the subscription price of $450 a month you can now have your human cleaner come twice a week
by EagnaIonat
1 subcomments
- Seems like something for people with more money than sense. If you could afford to drop money on this, odds on you can get a weekly maid who will do it for a fraction of the price.
Watching the videos, they have the cleanest kids in that house. The ability to move pillows 4 inches is just blowing my mind.
by stevepotter
0 subcomment
- It's inevitable that someone will build a good robot to do these mundane chores. But is that a good thing? I vacuum every night and during that I get some great thinking done. If I had a robot vacuum, I can said with certainty I would make good use of that time.
- Put a maid's uniform on it and looks almost like Rosey for the Jetsons (1962): https://thejetsons.fandom.com/wiki/Rosey
Now honest question: How is all of that Daily Reset and Laundry stuff going to work if you have stairs and multiple floors?
- And so it begun..
Jokes aside does anybody else notice the eerie similarities with gray aliens?
- I don't think this or the other competitor announced last year will ever ship, or if they do, they'll quickly go out of business. There's no real product there.
by TrackerFF
1 subcomments
- So here's the thing: Laundry isn't really the chore that eats up my time. It takes like a minute or two to move clothes from the basket to the machine, and seconds to turn it on. Same with moving them to the dryer afterwards.
Same with easy tidying up.
What takes time, however, is cleaning and making food.
by YeGoblynQueenne
0 subcomment
- >> Laundry and tidying are valuable because they recur, generate messy edge cases and create training data. They are also privacy-sensitive and physically variable in ways that robot demos tend to hide.
It's the WISYWYG model of AI: when you watch a video of a (usually humanoid) robot folding laundry, tying shoelaces, hanging shirts etc, it's hard to appreciate the specificity of the observed performance. Which is extreme: a robot folding a t-shirt can only fold that one t-shirt in the video unless it's been explicitly trained to fold... another one. You need to train for every single t-shirt, every single shoe whose laces you want to tie up etc [1].
It's hard to believe because we expect a humanoid that can fold one t-shirt to be able to fold any t-shirt and usually also many if not all other kinds of clothing. But that's not how it works with robots, or in any case their AI. Hence the need to teleoperate.
Btw, no, Transformers have not yet revolutionised the field [2].
As to "fake it 'till you [have enough data to train a super-capable AI and] make it" that's the same bet made by Tesla and its autopilot, and there's still not enough data for a safe/ level-4/5 self-driving car, despite all the cars that Tesla has sold. Nor, dear reader, are Waymo robotaxis level 5 yet (despite them being apparently much safe than anyone else's SDCs).
>> Beds, made. Pillows, blankets, kids' and pets' toys, shoes, back where they belong.
No way modern AI can figure out where "kids' and pets' toys, shoes" belong. As if there's such a thing anyway.
>> With Laundry Flow, Isaac 1 goes beyond folding, finding and picking up dirty clothes and handling loaded hampers.
I put my dirty laundry in a plastic bug under a kitchen cupboard.
Will Isaac 1 be able to deal with it?
:angel eyes:
___________________
[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/12/02/a-revolution-i...
Check out the bit where the reporter asks "If I gave it my shoe (...) would it totally fail?".
[2] Mac Schwager: How General are Generalist Robot Policies?
https://youtu.be/C4NQNeSO2vs?si=7J3Is_WyZc3L0lQk
- Can it vacuum for me? Change the bedding? Can I put it to work in a blacksmith shop? Can it live outside and have the task of picking up leaves from the garden one by one until it finally breaks and causes The Android Uprising?
by thelastgallon
0 subcomment
- Whats doable with todays technology is to give people walking robots[1] and instantly enable last mine connectivity to all metro/train/bus transit.
Bikes (and e-scooters, one wheels) are a decent solution, but you can't take them in most metros or buses. 2nd/3rd world infrastructure is pothole ridden, not even ready for bikes. Walking can take you everywhere.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/G3oP9T5LQ64
- Top comments discuss the price, the design, the tech, which is what I expect on HN of course.
I do question: why? $8000 to pick up the laundry and fold clothes. Good god, is this what innovation and technology aspires to achieve in 2026?
- The product specs are pretty light on details. Weight? Speed? Capabilities? How loud is it?
- This thing looks like they should package in a vacuum / floor washer into its base and something to empty/replenish it into that large base unit it docks with.
- For some reason, reminds me of Cassandra: https://www.netflix.com/title/81621534. Maybe it's the gripping fingers or the way it rolls around the house in the demo video..
- Those folding clothes clips are the best:
- The robot dragging one corner over itself into a sloppy mess.
- Cut.
- It’s perfectly folded.
by theplumber
0 subcomment
- For the people complaining about human operators: Stop bitching! It will be just like us vibe-coding on multi monitors. This is the future of work.
by thekhatribharat
0 subcomment
- At $450/month, that's the same hourly rate as India's Urban Company / Snabbit / Pronto instant help. So it's price-competitive even in India.
- Could work well in vacation rentals where items in the house are well defined with very specific put back places.
- Hopefully they can pull this off. Aged care is already a problem in many countries, and getting worse with an aging population and lack of workers such as cleaners. Even just laundry could keep people living in their own homes for a few extra years.
- Thank goodness! That pillow has been in the wrong place on my sofa for weeks and I didn't know what to do!
- The last time I saw one of these things being promoted I found out all of the "demos" on YouTube had some dude sitting in a closest with a VR headset controlling the whole thing.
- So that laundry task is not possible due to wheels at least in my house. You need to Cary this guy everywhere lol
- There you go, all your privacy gone right in the hands of these companies!
- You guys fold laundry?
- I'll buy a robot that can put fitted sheets and fold every piece of laundry no matter how contorted/inside-out it is. Till then, they're just gimmicks. Also, it should have legs.
- Are these the same guys that were trashing airbnbs testing the robots?
- Not a single frame showing the robot grabs anything.
Cut scene aaaand folded! It's like magic.
by hamburgererror
0 subcomment
- Can't wait to see the first horror movies about home robots
- This is another industry that seems to me a lot like the AI glasses. It's that sweet spot of being extremely difficult to make work, whilst simultaneously offering almost nothing of value.
It's actually striking that what they're promising it can do is almost nothing, and that it still won't be able to do what they claim. "Folds and puts clothes away" - ok, can I see any video of it taking clothes out of a washing machine (it can't), folding them, identifying where the clothes should go and then putting them there, and for example, opening a wardrobe and putting the clothes into the right place - possibly underneath other stuff that's already in there.
- That is one of the creepiest things I've seen in a while! And the first time something akin to uncanny valley has gotten me. The way it slowly raises out of its dock. The arms just hanging there in the photo at the bottom. The weirdly broad 'smile' it seems to have (it's just the lip of the head I think, but it looks like a very creepy smile to me). Its slow methodical movements. The way it wheeled past that doorway. Eurghh. Is it just me? I feel like I could never relax with this in my home. Like I'll turn around to find it inches away from me, watching.
- Doesn’t seem to handle stairs. This assumes a large 1 story house?
by johndenverscar
0 subcomment
- I wonder how this thing would hold up against a dog
- This looks like something from 80s sci-fi and far behind what Unitree has.
- Number five is alive!
- Soooo close, but I have a 4 floor house. Talk to me when it does stairs.
- Feels like they cloned the vacuum cleaner Roborock Saros Z70, and attached the arms to a pole instead of the base.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/x9TdqrvDHWY
Especially the arm clamp is the same shape, the actions are practically the same (take object and put in basket, teleoperation with live camera).
The type of thing you have lot of fun for 5 minutes.
Cheaper Unitree robots that starts at 4,900 USD are impressive in comparison.
Weave says the robot blends autonomy with teleoperation (remote assistance by a Weave specialist) to guarantee that we complete every fold
Quite ridiculous. For 449 USD / month couldn't you just hire someone to clean your whole place and even sort your clothes, empty the trash, etc ?
by dreamcompiler
0 subcomment
- "Constantly improving"
This means "constant forced software updates with the potential to brick the product." Just like Nest.
Also likely: Inadequate security so your robot becomes a node in a residential VPN or a botnet. Or some hacker takes over your robot to scope out the interior of your house and sells that info to burglars on the darknet. Or to ICE.
And you know what cannot be improved with software? Sensors. Like the kind in its fingertips that almost certainly are not good enough to allow it to fold laundry reliably.
- It looks terribly depressed, lonely and sad.
- RadioShack where are you, you should be selling these.
- So you will have low-paid Africans from 3rd world countries tele-operating a robots in rich peoples houses doing chores?
- Can it climb stairs?
- This looks vaguely interesting, but not with remote brains. Make this local-only and I might bite.
I do not want a giant chunk of metal and sensors controlled by some outside entity roaming around my home freely.
- "... teleoperation assistance when needed to guarantee task completion."
NOPE. Close tab. If this does not work without an internet connection then it's DOA. I should only have to connect it for software updates. Other than that, the bot is offline, period.
No? Think of a malicious actor hacking into one of these things and using your favorite kitchen knife against you while you sleep. I want a robot where the probability of that occurring is zero.
- I put my clothes into the clothes bin directly without using the floor as a temporary storage space.
- No stairs, no go.
by sandworm101
1 subcomments
- No legs? Call it what it is: Dalek
- > Practical and delightful robots, shipping today.
...
> Deliveries to California begin in Fall 2026. Broader U.S. availability starting in 2027.
by uriahlight
0 subcomment
- If it needs a remote hooman operator at any point, it's an absolute no go for me. Dead on arrival.
by hettygreen
1 subcomments
- I'd love to own one of these!
It could fold my laundry while I'm busy working from home as a teleoperator for Weave Robots.
- The first thing that jumped out at me is its form factor. It is easier to engineer (cheaper) and less threatening than a bipedal robot. The drawback, of course, is that it is less mobile.
- Imagine the enhanced Evil Maid attacks your could peform
- I mean its a start to getting something to market? It just looks way behind the chinese models that are being delivered.
- Honestly if this actually worked to fold laundry, teleoperation or not, I'd buy it.
Just prove to me it's deaf. I don't care who sees me naked that's their problem not mine.
- Product page: https://www.weaverobotics.com/isaac-1
by redsocksfan45
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- Once again, the text is riddled with LLM'isms. Is this the new norm nowadays? Looking at OP's submission history, it's evident that they are utilizing HN for SEO farming.
A much more valuable discussion would be centered around the company's own website, which contains the same information, and doesn't require an LLM mediator: https://www.weaverobotics.com/isaac-1
- [dead]
by MagicMoonlight
0 subcomment
- [dead]
- Teleoperation looks like a great business opportunity. Hire voyeurs for cheap and sell to exhibitionists.
by johnnyApplePRNG
1 subcomments
- Everything about this product looks terrible.
Must operate on a perfectly flat surface. My roomba could probably handle a larger carpet curb than that top-heavy thing.
Head and eyes appear to be at human crotch level for some reason... gross.
What a waste of engineering talent.
by nh23423fefe
5 subcomments
- Surrogate slavery is going to be a large business one day.
If you are telling me that one day I'll have a robot that cooks, cleans, is a personal assistant, a therapist. Eventually it'll be a chauffeur, babysitter, and obviously sex slave.
Why wouldn't i pay 50000 for that, besides the obvious "you are a creep" like why do I care when it's coming and market forces are going to make it an indistinguishable substitute human a la Joi from blade runner?
- This is like a demo iPhone 1 where Optimis will be the iPhone 17 Pro
by AussieWog93
3 subcomments
- HN seems really, really negative this week for some reason (it maybe it's just me).
This seems cool, even if it's really just teleoperated.
by ElijahLynn
1 subcomments
- 2027 will be the year of the robots.
I also saw Tesla is ramping up to make millions of Optimus robots. And Amazon bought Fauna robotics which I predict we will start seeing "last 100 ft" deliveries soon. Amazon's Rivian packmobile will pull up to a block and 5 Fauna robots (they are short) will jump out and start delivering packages to the neighborhood.
The robots are coming...
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