A software engineer in San Francisco who posts on TikTok as @coder.g shared a video of a humanoid robot from Tau Robotics cleaning her home. On-screen text in the video reads, “Had a robot come clean my house today in San Francisco.” The robot wore a black long-sleeved shirt and pants with “TAU ROBOTICS” printed in yellow on its back, along with a helmet-like headpiece.
The TikTok video showed the robot walking down a wooden staircase with deliberate steps, its arms bent and hands shaped like grippers. It later wiped a bathroom countertop with a clear spray bottle in one hand and a cleaning tool with a blue cloth in the other. In another scene, the robot used a white stick vacuum on a polished wooden floor near a kitchen counter. A grey cat with folded ears appeared on the stairs at one point, looking toward the robot.
The video has gained 4.1 million views, 262,300 likes, and more than 16,400 comments. Viewers quickly focused on the robot’s pace rather than the cleaning itself. One commenter asked, “How many days did it take him to clean?” Others left similar remarks about the slow movement.
Remote operators control Tau Robotics cleaners from home
In a follow-up TikTok video, the woman addressed comments urging people to hire human cleaners instead. She completed one comment that began “Hire a person who needs to pay rent and feed their” by saying “family.” She stated that the robot is completely remotely operated and that a person on the other end controls it and receives the pay.
She explained that the remote setup means the operator does not need to travel to the home, sit in traffic, park, or carry equipment. The person can work from the comfort of their own home, she said. She added that the future of work does not necessarily mean humans will disappear, but that the work is changing. Technology has been changing jobs for a long time, she noted.
She said she also employs a human cleaner who comes to her house, but had no problem trying the remotely operated robot as a cool experiment. She expressed that she did not understand why the idea seemed so controversial to some viewers.
According to a CBS News report, Tau Robotics offers the service for $30 an hour as part of a pilot program open to 1,000 households in San Francisco. The company builds AI technology to power the robots, which cost $50,000 each to make and receive names such as Chelsea and Elon.
Co-founder and CEO Alexander Koch told CBS News that the robots are initially trained to imitate human performance and then trained to exceed it. Such human supervision is common in robotics, as seen when a shopper filmed a robot named Tally roaming a Kroger aisle.
Koch stated that the robots cannot do everything on their own. They do not know how to walk upstairs or where to vacuum without direction, which comes mostly from humans at the moment, he said. Human technicians supervise the AI that controls the robots and can step in if needed. The supervisors wear VR goggles that let them see through the robots’ cameras into people’s spaces.
Koch said Tau plans to scale up to 1,000 cleanings a week in San Francisco by 2027 and expand to other U.S. cities and internationally by 2028. He estimated that technicians would phase out around 2028 or 2029 once the robots reach higher self-sufficiency. The company is still pushing the limits of what the robots can do and is not entirely sure where those limits are, he added.
Ken Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley who researches robotics, told CBS News that humanoid robots remain relatively clumsy even with remote human assistance. He noted that the robots look nimble but are actually quite heavy and can fall over.
As they attempt to get back up, they may thrash around and accidentally hit anyone nearby. Goldberg said people would not want the robots near a child or a baby. He also pointed out that the robots’ grippers can pinch if someone tries to pick one up. Safety concerns persist even as humanoid robots advance into high-stakes fields, such as when they take a major leap toward the operating room for historic surgery.
Koch said that Tau’s technicians monitor to prevent humans and robots from getting too close. If something goes wrong, a technician can put the device into safety mode, which prompts it to lie down on the floor. Goldberg also raised privacy concerns, noting that the robots’ two cameras record video used to train the company’s AI and could capture personal items such as receipts and bills. Koch stated that Tau has full control over the data it collects because the camera system, networking, and computers are all its own.
Viewers left comments reacting to the robot’s movement in the original video. One wrote, “if you hired a human being to clean your home and they moved like this, you’d leave a guilt-ridden tip and a terrible public review.”
Another asked, “is this by the hour? bc it’s moving slow.” A different commenter stated, “That m–f needs to move a little faster chop chop.” One more said, “It’s a little too slow for me.” Additional remarks included “How many days did it take him to clean?” and “How old is this m–f moving like that.”
Published: Aug 24, 2026 02:30 pm