Can a humanoid do all my housework?

SHENZHEN — I opened my home last week to an unlikely trio: a boxy white robot named Quanta X1 Pro and its two human companions — housekeeper Aunty Dan and a Young engineer.

They’re part of a new cleaning service that launched in China in March as robot start-ups move beyond gongfu and dance to make humanoid figures more useful in the real world.

As China grapples with an aging workforce and declining birth rates, companies are betting on robots to be the domestic workers of the future, bringing them into people’s homes to better learn the job.

Curious, I signed up for a 149 yuan (S$28) three-hour cleaning service available in Shenzhen and Beijing.

Can a human figure do my work?

Cleaning is still mainly done by human hands, the engineer said Aunt Don was bustling about the kitchen.

For now, 1.6m tall A robot mounted on a wheeled base with two mechanical arms will perform only simple tasks and operate in my living area.

I watched as Quanta silently scanned the room to find out what it could and could do. It often works on its own, but needs help if it stumbles or gets stuck.

The engineer, who declined to give his name, watched its every move, ready to step in if anything got stuck or broke.

First of all The robot straightened two chairs at the dining table, grasping their legs with its pincer-like arms and pushing them into place.

It picked up two pairs of shoes from the floor and set them back on their rack. It dropped a couple, but managed after adjusting its grip on the second attempt.

It folded the four pieces of laundry scattered on the couch and laid them neatly aside. Pants and a cardigan proved tricky – each slipped off the bed once. Folding and stacking them took approx Nine Every minute, when blouses are easy, takes half the time.

The robot organized my table tops and removed what it determined to be junk – yes a sweet wrapper and a folded pamphlet; No Panadol empty box. But instead of throwing the two items together, it made two trips to the tank.

I wanted to see if Quanta could wipe down the dining table – not part of its regular package – so I put a damp cloth and a spray bottle of soap on it. The robot made sweeping motions with the cloth, but ignored the bottle and put it out of the way. It was breadcrumbed on the table.

The last job of the robot is to remove the used garbage bag from the garbage bin. It didn’t work: the bag was probably too full and stuck, the engineer guessed, and he finished the job.

He had to help Quanta when it got stuck in a raised door, fixing a wire that had come loose in its arm twice and fixing its spotty Internet connection.

Some things the robot did on its own, it did very slowly. By the time it was talking about my living room, Aunt Don cleaned the rest of the flat.

She washed the dirty dishes That the robot couldn’t Touch because its hands are not waterproof. She also cleaned the kitchen, scrubbed the toilet, swept the floor and folded the remaining clothes. Then she wiped down all the surfaces the robot hadn’t cleaned.

Asked what she thought of her humanoid companion, Aunt Dan was unimpressed. “Humans are still good at cleaning,” he said. “Look at the robot, what did it actually do?”

Houses are tricky for humans to clean because they are unpredictable environments full of delicate tasks. The industry also lacks the data to train them to become smarter quickly.

Many companies are training humanoids to perform tasks such as folding clothes and tidying tables in data factories that simulate home environments. But X Square Robot, created by Shenzhen-based Quanta, is going further with its home cleaning service, which has teamed up with lifestyle services platform 58.com.

A company representative told me that putting robots to work in real homes would be very useful for training. Because every home is different — from how apartments are laid out to where things are placed — robots can learn more with each job and evolve quickly.

To encourage people to open their homes, the company is essentially offering Quanta’s services for free. A three-hour house cleaning costs the same with or without the robot. Earlier, the robot-included version was sold at half price to attract subscribers.

The company said the robots have worked in 200 homes so far. In the coming time, it plans to expand what the robot can do and offer the service in more cities.

China is the world’s largest producer and user of humanoid robots, a market that investment bank Barclays estimates will reach US$200 billion globally by 2035.

In the city of Wuhan, the Chinese company GigaAI announced its upcoming experiments on families in May Human figure in houses. Residents can apply to have a robot work in their homes for free next year, with priority given to the elderly, children or families with pets.

In America, robots are entering homes. People can pay US$20,000 (S$25,600) to pre-order a home humanoid from start-up 1X Technologies, which is expected to ship this year. The company is a leader in collecting data from people’s homes.

Companies are racing to gather real-world training data because it’s currently a major bottleneck for AI, said George Steeler, head of robotics and automation at Steeler Technology & Market Advisory.

While the sector has seen a boom in funding, companies recognize that their technology needs to improve quickly, or investors may not. Doubt“, he said.

Robots that can reliably perform most household chores without supervision are, by most measures, at least a decade away, he added.

But in the interim, companies are scrambling to release robots that can do more and do it better — and humans like Anti Dan are filling the gap.

The housekeeper doesn’t rule out that the slow-moving human figure might someday pay off for her. In 10 years, she figured, “this could all be different.”