Robobutlers may never happen, but robot care workers are on their way

Do you hate loading the dishwasher enough to pay someone to do it remotely? Nicole Kobie wonders about the weird future of home robots

- Nicole Kobie

Someone to make a cup of tea for you, fix dinner while you're at work and then do the dishes while you catch up on your favourite shows. This is no backwards dream of a stereotypical 1950s housewife, but the much-promised future of robot butlers.

Such robobutlers don't yet exist. But plenty of startups, researchers and billionaires are trying to make the dream a reality - for those with large bank accounts, at least.

British-based Prosper Robotics, founded by former OpenAI staffer Shariq Hashme, has built Alfie to do chores while you're out. Tesla is working on the humanoid Optimus to help around the house (and in Tesla factories). And humanoid robots are in the works for a variety of use cases, including warehouses and retail, from companies such as California's Figure, Norway's 1X Technologies, Oregon's Agility Robots and Canada's Sanctuary AI.

Nor should we forget that Honda, Toyota and Sony have long been working on humanoid robots for home and industrial use. Still, robobutlers remain around the corner, as they have for years.

Early movers

You can make the argument that home robots already exist. Roombas have been vacuuming homes for over two decades, with 20 million sold during that time, and there are now bots to wash your windows, mop your floors, scrub your BBQ grill and even clean your pool (you do have a pool, right?). But there's a big gap between making specialist devices such as these and a general robot to operate in a home.

Even Amazon has struggled. In 2018, the tech giant was rumoured to be working on a domestic robot under the codename Vesta, only to send up a metaphorical white flag four years.

later when it acquired Roomba maker iRobot for $1.7 billion (a deal currently being examined by regulators).