Tau Robotics is renting out humanoid robots to clean American homes for $30 an hour, with every machine piloted remotely by a human operator.
The company's co-founder, Cornelia Weinzierl, told the BBC the robots handle a full list of household chores. "They can wipe your surfaces, it can do your laundry, it can make your beds," she said.
The service is drawing attention in San Francisco, where resident Finn Metz booked a session and let a BBC film crew follow along. Video of the test, produced by Katy Bailes and edited by Meiying Wu, was published by BBC News.
The setup works like this: a person sits at a console somewhere else and controls the robot's arms, hands and movement in real time. The machine does the physical work inside the home. The operator supplies the judgment.
That detail matters. Tau Robotics is not selling a fully autonomous housekeeper. It is selling remote labor attached to a robot body, which raises a simple question the BBC put to viewers: does it clean as well as a person would?
The $30 hourly rate puts the service in the same range as a human house cleaner in many U.S. cities, and above what some charge. Customers are paying for the machine, the operator and the novelty of a robot in their living room.
Weinzierl's company is one of several robotics firms pushing humanoid machines toward everyday tasks. Most of those efforts still depend on people somewhere in the loop, either training the software or steering the hardware directly.
Metz's session offered a real-world look at where the technology stands. The BBC did not report a verdict on whether the robot matched a human cleaner, leaving that judgment to viewers who watch the footage.
For now, the pitch is straightforward. Pay by the hour, get a robot that folds laundry and makes beds, and accept that a stranger is driving it. Whether Americans will pay for that arrangement is the open question Tau Robotics now faces.
