Humanoid Cleaning Robot Service: What ABB Teaches

How a $30 an hour humanoid cleaning robot service in San Francisco works, from charwomen and Merry Maids to remote operators, and what ABB cobots bring to it.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/14/20265 min read

For $30 an hour, a startup in San Francisco will now send a humanoid cleaning robot to your apartment. Tau Robotics began taking bookings in late July 2026, and by early October the service had made USA Today and a string of local papers. The business model is an old one: a cleaner booked by the hour. This post follows it from the charwomen of the early twentieth century through cleaning franchises and robot vacuums to today's teleoperated humanoids. It looks at what the robots actually do in a home and where ABB's collaborative robots fit.

White wheeled humanoid robot with a smiling screen face next to a smiling young woman

An engineer at Halodi Robotics, the company now called 1X, stands beside its EVE humanoid robot in 2021. Photo: Nicholas-halodi / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From charwomen to cleaning franchises and robot vacuums

Paid house cleaning was long split between two kinds of worker. A maid lived in the household. A charwoman came in for a few hours a day or a week, was paid by the hour and often found work through an agency. Before 1960, "charwoman" was an official job title in United States government agencies, the Bureau of the Census among them. In August 1942 the photographer Gordon Parks portrayed Ella Watson, a charwoman who cleaned federal offices in Washington, D.C., standing with her mop and broom in front of an American flag.

Black and white photo of a woman holding a broom and mop in front of an American flag

Ella Watson, a charwoman who cleaned government offices in Washington, D.C., photographed by Gordon Parks in August 1942. Photo: Gordon Parks, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Machines first arrived as tools in human hands. James Murray Spangler, a janitor in Ohio, patented a portable electric vacuum cleaner in 1908 and sold the rights to William Hoover's company. By the middle of the century the upright vacuum was an ordinary household tool. Later the hourly cleaner turned into a franchise business. Dallen Peterson and his family founded Merry Maids in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1979, and ServiceMaster bought the company in 1988. By 2007 it had about 1,400 franchises.

Black and white photo of a woman in an apron dusting a dresser next to an upright vacuum

A woman dusts a sideboard with an upright vacuum cleaner beside her, photographed between 1920 and 1950. Photo: Unknown author via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first cleaning robots took over one narrow job. Electrolux introduced the Trilobite robot vacuum in 1996, and an early version appeared on the BBC programme Tomorrow's World in 1997. iRobot followed with the Roomba in September 2002. These machines vacuumed open floor and had no hands, so picking up socks, wiping counters and scrubbing the toilet stayed with people. Our robot vacuum history covers that branch of the story in more detail.

Round silver robot vacuum cleaner with a small green display sitting on a wooden floor

An Electrolux Trilobite, one of the first robot vacuum cleaners, on a wooden floor. Photo: Patrik Tschudin / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

How the $30-an-hour humanoid service works

Tau Robotics says its humanoids, which have arms, legs and a head, can vacuum, take out the trash, clear clutter, wipe surfaces and pick up spills from the floor. They can also move chairs, laundry baskets and small tables to clean around them. Bookings are invite only and limited to San Francisco. A session lasts one hour and costs $30 for one robot or $60 for two. Euronews reported in September that the service had cleaned more than 50 apartments and condominiums in its first month. The company plans longer sessions, and later home repair and elderly care.

White and black humanoid robot standing among people at an outdoor evening event

A Tesla Optimus humanoid robot among visitors, photographed in October 2024. Photo: Steve Jurvetson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Nobody leaves these robots alone. CEO and co-founder Alex Koch told KTVU that "each humanoid is jointly controlled by a human operator and AI." A trained operator sits off site, watches live video from cameras on the robot's head and both wrists, and steers it for the whole visit. Tau records the footage and says it uses it to train the models it hopes will one day do the job without an operator. Koch told KTVU the company had eight humanoids, most of them used for development. UC Berkeley professor Ken Goldberg told ABC7: "I really think it is too early."

Small grey humanoid robot with a glowing blue face ring standing on a patterned carpet

A Unitree G1 humanoid, one of the small humanoids now used to collect training data. Photo: Sayanesy / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

ABB does not make a humanoid and has no part in Tau's service, but its collaborative robots contain several of the pieces such a robot needs. The GoFa CRB 15000 is a six-axis arm built to work next to people. Sensors in each joint let it stop when it touches someone, and you can teach it a path by moving it by hand. ABB has also shown a mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base meant for hospital laboratories. Our comparison of humanoid pilots and proven automation explains why factories still lean on arms like these.

Two armed white ABB robot on a wheeled base standing in a bright laboratory corridor

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

What it will take for robots to clean homes alone

For Tau, every booking also produces training data. The company states that the video its robots record "is the training data," and it keeps the footage, unblurred faces included, unless a customer asks for deletion. Microphones are switched off, and Tau says it does not sell personal data. 1X is on a similar path: it offered its Neo humanoid for pre-order at $20,000, or $499 a month, and Neo also relies on remote operators for now. Buyers who worry about cameras in the bedroom can read our post on home robot privacy.

Black round robot vacuum docked at its charger against a wall on a wooden floor

A robot vacuum back on its charging dock in a home. Photo: Piperpet / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Speed and dexterity are still the open problems. Customers quoted in the reports describe a robot slower than a human cleaner, and Goldberg points out that picking objects off the floor is still hard for robots. An hour of robot cleaning also takes an hour of a trained operator's time, so the labour cost now sits with the person at the screen. The price can only fall once one operator can watch several robots at a time, and that needs far more autonomy than these machines have today.

White ABB collaborative robot arm with a gripper on a wooden table next to small speakers

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table in an office setting. Photo: ABB

Industrial robots suggest what a home robot will need. In factories, ABB robots are taught with lead-through programming, checked in simulation before they run, and kept within speed and zone limits by safety software such as SafeMove. A robot that cleans homes on its own will need tested skills, slow speeds near people and a record of what it did. Whether ABB ever sells a product for homes is an open question. For now its cobots show how an arm can work safely among people, and start-ups like Tau are testing whether customers will pay for the rest.

Woman guiding the end of a white ABB robot arm with both hands at a table

Lead through teaching: a person moves an ABB GoFa arm by hand to show it a task. Photo: ABB

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