Like the idea of a humanoid robot taking care of chores around your home? Well, the dream of having a robot butler serve your needs has come a step closer after 1X Technologies announced on Tuesday that it’s opened preorders for its home robot.
Called NEO, the humanoid robot requires a fully refundable $200 deposit followed by a payment of $20,000 when it ships next year. Alternatively, you can pay a monthly fee of $499 to use it, with a minimum commitment of six months.
The bipedal bot, which has been a decade in development, stands at 66 inches and tips the scales at 66 pounds. It incorporates four mics, three speakers, and 2 fisheye cameras. Functioning for up to four hours on a single charge, NEO can also lift up to 154 pounds and carry objects weighing up to 55 pounds.
A video (top) shared by Norway-founded, California-headquartered 1X shows NEO performing a range of tasks around the home, from tidying up and vacuuming to watering plants and doing the laundry. It can also act as a companion, chatting with you in a human-like manner.
It all looks very impressive, until you learn that for more complex tasks, NEO has to be operated remotely by a 1X employee, with the robot mirroring the operator’s movements as he or she peers into your home through NEO’s cameras. Yes, it’s a big trade-off, though 1X has put in place various limitations in an effort to get people onside. For example, using the accompanying app, you can make certain rooms in your home off-limits, and the system blurs out faces. The same app also lets you see what the robot sees — useful if you’re out and you want to know how it’s getting on with its chores.
1X CEO Bernt Børnich says that using a remote operator in this way enables his team to train the robot’s AI systems to eventually perform more challenging tasks without any remote help, so early adopters can at least feel good playing a role in helping to perfect the robot’s skills.
The Wall Street Journal’s Joanna Stern spent some time with NEO, and it has to be said, the results were mixed. For example, it took NEO 67 seconds to fetch a bottle of water from a fridge 10 feet away, and closing the dishwasher door took way longer than necessary. Take note, though, the NEO that Stern saw isn’t the one shipping next year, with the next version coming with various improvements that include upgraded hand dexterity.
While 1X deserves respect for letting its NEO robot into regular folks’ homes, it clearly still has a long way to go before it becomes a truly useful home help. But that’s what the next step is all about — finding out where it needs to improve and then helping it to improve, so that a future NEO can operate more effectively — and independently — around the home.
While a growing number of companies are developing humanoid robots, most are focusing on incorporating them into work settings rather than the home. Robotics company Figure, however, is looking to put its humanoid robot into both the home and the workplace, with its recently unveiled Figure 03 robot also shown performing chores around the home. The U.S. company is in the early stages of testing its robotic home helper, so it could be a while before preorders open for that one.
