Robot house cleaning service is being offered in this Bay Area city

SAN FRANCISCO - No longer a thing of the sci-fi future, robot house cleaners are moving into the realm of reality here in the Bay Area. 

San Francisco-based engineering start-up Tau Robotics has launched its robot house cleaning service. 

What we know:

For $30 an hour, customers can hire a humanoid to clean, vacuum, tidy, wipe and scrub. 

Tau Robotics began offering its service publicly in late July. 

The robots are programmed for everyday house and office cleaning as well as deep cleaning, which includes tackling stubborn build-up like dust on baseboards, scrubbing of grout and getting under and behind kitchen appliances, according to the company website.    

The machine cleaners, with arms, legs and a robotic head, are designed to adapt to a client’s space and preferences. 

"Initial interest has been very strong," according to Alex Koch, CEO and co-founder of Tau Robotics. 

Current limitations

The services are currently only being offered to homes in San Francisco. 

And for now, Tau Robotics' humanoids are available on an invite-only basis with cleaning sessions limited to an hour.

"We’re using invite codes simply to control demand and customer location while capacity is limited and we are optimizing our operations," Koch explained to KTVU. 

Live remote operators

The robots are not fully autonomous yet. 

"Each humanoid is jointly controlled by a human operator and AI," Koch noted.

The robots’ tasks range from vacuuming floors, emptying the trash, to clearing clutter and wiping up spills from off the floor, according to the Tau Robotics' website.

Featured robots

In all, Koch said the company currently has eight humanoids, though most are being used for development purposes.

On its website, Tau Robotics highlighted its featured San Francisco cleaners: 

• Chelsea's "strong suit" is kitchens and bathrooms, as the robot is adept at cleaning sinks, counters, mirrors, tiles, and floors.
• Elon makes recurring weekly visits across the Mission and Noe Valley neighborhoods.
• Tony offers deep cleaning, focusing on "buildup a regular visit never quite reaches."

Mounted with cameras

The robots are equipped with multiple cameras and are operated in real time by a trained human who is off site.  

The cameras are mounted on the head and on both wrists, providing continuous and a first-person view of the space the robots are cleaning.  

"One trained operator controls the robot during your visit and sees the live camera feed for that duration," the website states.  

In addition to the live remote operator, Tau Robotics said access to the footage is also granted to its supervisors and support staff in the event of a complaint or if operating or safety issues arise. The data is also accessible to the company's engineering team, as well as its contracted service providers that help with storing and processing data.

The company stressed it does not sell customers’ personal information. 

Privacy concerns

Dig deeper:

The video is recorded and could trigger privacy concerns.

"We use that footage to run the cleaning and to train the AI models that we hope will eventually do the job without a human operator," the company said on its website.

Tau Robotics said the ultimate goal is to send out robots that perform autonomously. 

"The only way we know to get there is to learn from real work in real homes," the company explained.  

Tau Robotics stressed that the camera recording is not optional when using its service and said that training a model is an ongoing process.

"The video our robot records is not a byproduct of the cleaning. It is the training data," the website states. "There is no separate, sanitized copy. The footage from your home, as recorded and including unblurred faces, is what our models learn from." 

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The company said the robots’ microphones have been disabled and therefore no audio is recorded.

"The robot can speak to you through a speaker, but audio only travels one way: your operator can talk, and cannot hear you," according to the Tau Robotics website. 

In addition to training, the video is used to create service records of a job, including specifics on what was cleaned, how long it took as well as anything that went wrong. Those records are retained by the company for seven years. 

Ways to protect privacy

As part of the privacy guidelines, robots do not go into bedrooms and bathrooms unless the client opts in, during booking, for those areas to be cleaned.

"You can also mark any other room, area, or object as off-limits. Your operator is given these instructions before the visit and does not take the robot into excluded areas," the website noted.  

A client can request video footage to be deleted after the cleaning visit. Otherwise, the footage is saved indefinitely.

The company noted that if a customer requests footage to be deleted after the data is already placed in the training pipeline of a model, at that point, individual visits cannot be removed. 

While the company will not use the data again, Tau Robotics said it cannot "un-train" a model that has already been trained.  

No facial recognition technology

When a humanoid’s cameras capture the faces of people in the home while working, the company will retain the images, unblurred, but promised it will never run them through facial recognition technology.

"We do not attempt to identify individuals. We do not build face templates or match faces across visits," according to the website. 

Robot service expansion 

What's next:

Tau Robotics said it does not have a set date yet for when it will lift its invite-only model.  

Koch said the best way for San Francisco residents to get on the invite list is to join the company's waitlist, which requires signing up with an email address. Future clients must also list the neighborhood where they live.

The plan is for the robots to eventually move into services beyond cleaning, like home repair and maintenance.

Tau Robotics also said it's working to expand to other locations starting next year, first offering its services to other parts of the Bay Area before moving onto major cities around the U.S.