INVASION OF THE HOME HUMANOID ROBOTS

Companies like 1X are getting closer to the future

- CADE METZ

In a recent morning, I knocked on the front door of a handsome two-storey home in Redwood City, California. Within seconds, the door was opened by a faceless robot dressed in a beige bodysuit that clung tight to its trim waist and long legs.

This svelte humanoid greeted me with what seemed to be a Scandinavian accent, and I offered to shake hands. As our palms met, it said: “I have a firm grip”

When the home's owner, a Norwegian engineer named Bernt Bornich, asked for some bottled water, the robot turned, walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator with one hand.

Artificial intelligence is already driving cars, writing essays and computer code. Now humanoids, machines built to look like humans and powered by Al, are poised to move into our homes so they can help with the daily chores. Bornich is CEO and founder of a startup called 1X. Before the end of the year, his company hopes to put his robot, Neo, into more than 100 homes in Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

His startup is among the dozens of companies planning to sell humanoids for homes and businesses. Investors have poured US$7.2 billion into more than 50 startups since 2015, according to PitchBook, a research firm that tracks the tech industry. The humanoid frenzy reached a new peak last year, when investments topped $1.6 billion. That did not include the billions that Elon Musk and Tesla, his electric car company, are pumping into Optimus, a humanoid they began building in 2021.

Entrepreneurs like Bornich and Musk believe that humanoids will one day do much of the physical work that is now handled by people, including household chores like wiping counters and emptying dishwashers, warehouse work like sorting packages, and factory labour like building cars on an assemblyline.