WE EXPLORE THE TRENDS AND TECHNOLOGIES THAT ARE SET TO SHAPE THE FUTURE
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.
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 continue to remain just around the corner, just as they have for as many years as we can remember.
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
