2026年8月11日 / 美国东部时间上午11:23 / 哥伦比亚广播公司新闻
厌倦了打扫家里卫生？有一家公司想让你把这项任务交给人形机器人。
现在，旧金山部分居民可以每小时支付30美元，雇佣机器人上门打扫房屋。开发机器人人工智能技术的工程公司Tau Robotics上月宣布了这项服务，作为面向1000个家庭的试点项目的一部分。
这些身着Tau Robotics黑色制服、被命名为切尔西和埃隆等人形机器人，可以完成吸尘、擦拭厨房台面和倒垃圾等家务。Tau Robotics利用人工智能对这些每台制造成本5万美元的机器人进行训练。
“最初，它们会被训练模仿人类的表现，之后再被训练超越人类的表现，”Tau Robotics联合创始人兼首席执行官亚历山大·科赫告诉哥伦比亚广播公司新闻。
Tau Robotics的这项服务目前仅对受邀用户开放。但科赫表示，公司计划到2027年将旧金山的周服务规模扩大到1000次清洁服务，然后在2028年将业务扩展到美国其他城市以及国际市场。
其他多家公司也在陆续推出人形机器人产品，比如IX Technologies的Neo机器人。但专家预测，要让这些机器人高效、可靠地完成家务任务，至少还需要5到10年时间。
在此期间，人类会随时待命以防意外状况。Tau Robotics的机器人由人类技术人员远程操作，他们可以监督控制机器人的人工智能系统，一旦机器人在某项任务中卡住，就能介入协助。监控人员佩戴虚拟现实头盔，通过机器人的摄像头视角查看用户家中的情况。
“Tau的机器人无法独立完成所有事情，”科赫说，“比如它不知道如何上楼，也不知道该在哪里吸尘。目前这些操作大多由人类指导。”
安全与安保顾虑
加州大学伯克利分校研究机器人与自动化的工程教授肯·戈德伯格表示，尽管有人类远程协助，目前阶段的人形机器人仍相对笨拙。
“它们看起来相当灵活，但实际上非常沉重，”他说，并指出机器人可能会摔倒。在试图重新站起的过程中，它们可能会胡乱摆动，意外撞到附近的人。
“你肯定不希望这种设备靠近儿童或婴儿，”戈德伯格说。
即便机器人处于站立状态，人们可能还是需要与其保持距离。戈德伯格表示，如果有人试图搬动机器人，它可能会伸出机械爪——机器人术语中对“手”的称呼——夹到对方。
科赫表示，Tau Robotics配备的人类技术人员团队会全程监控，防止人类和人形机器人靠得太近。如果出现任何异常，技术人员可以将设备切换到安全模式，本质上就是让机器人躺倒在地以关机，他解释道。
科赫称，Tau Robotics计划在机器人达到更高的自主水平后逐步取消技术人员支持，他估计这一时间大约在2028年或2029年。在那之前，整个过程都处于学习阶段。
“我们仍在探索它的能力极限，所以我们自己也不确定极限在哪里，”他说。
除了安全顾虑，专家们还提出了机器人使用过程中的安保和隐私问题。
Tau的机器人配备了两个摄像头作为“眼睛”，会录制视频用于训练公司的人工智能系统并优化技术功能。但戈德伯格指出，人形机器人的摄像头有可能拍到用户家中的个人物品，比如收据和账单，从而侵犯用户隐私。
当被问及产品的安全协议时，科赫表示Tau Robotics“完全掌控”所收集的数据。“摄像头系统、网络和计算机都是我们自主研发的，”他说。
家用人形机器人？
随着投资者向人工智能领域投入更多资金，人形机器人行业预计将在未来几年快速增长。巴克莱投资银行预测，当前估值为20亿至30亿美元的市场，到2035年可能增长至2000亿美元。
摩根士丹利研究部去年发布的另一项分析估计，到2050年，人形机器人的数量将达到近10亿台。但该投行表示，在这类机器人进入普通家庭之前，价格需要大幅下降，社会对机器人的接受度也需要进一步提高。
就目前而言，大多数人形机器人都被用于其他用途。巴克莱估计，2025年部署的这类机器人约有1.5万台，其中90%用于制造业和仓储等工业场景。
巴克莱分析师佐尔尼察·托多罗夫预测，这项技术的部署将是“渐进式的”，“大规模普及”至少需要五年时间。随着机器人功能的提升，托多罗夫认为家用场景的需求将会激增。
“尽管目前的普及仍处于早期阶段，但人形机器人承担服务型任务的经济机遇十分可观，”她在一封电子邮件中说道。
戈德伯格则更为谨慎。他估计，要让机器人达到有效完成清洁等家庭服务任务所需的技术水平，还需要再花十年时间。
“我不是说我们永远做不到，”他说，“但我们离拥有人形管家还很远。目前的科学技术还不成熟。”
Are humanoid robots ready to scrub your kitchen and take out the trash? Not quite.
August 11, 2026 / 11:23 AM EDT / CBS News
Sick of cleaning your home? One company wants to let you offload the task to a humanoid robot.
For $30 an hour, some San Francisco residents can now hire a robot to clean their home. Tau Robotics, an engineering company that builds AI technology to power robots, announced the service last month as part of a pilot program open to 1,000 households.
The humanoid robots, dressed in black Tau Robotics uniforms and given names such as Chelsea and Elon, perform household chores like vacuuming, cleaning kitchen counters and taking out the trash. Tau trains the bots, which cost $50,000 each to make, using artificial intelligence.
“Initially, they will be trained to imitate human performance, and then they will be trained to exceed human performance,” Alexander Koch, Tau’s co-founder and CEO, told CBS News.
A Tau Robotics humanoid robot unloads utensils from a dishwasher. Tau Robotics
Tau’s service is invite-only for now. But Koch said the company plans to scale up to 1,000 cleanings a week in San Francisco by 2027, then expand to other U.S. cities and internationally by 2028.
Numerous other companies are also starting to roll out humanoid robots, such as IX Technologies’ Neo. But experts predict it will take at least five or 10 years before they can perform household tasks effectively and reliably.
In the meantime, humans are at the ready in case things go sideways. Tau’s robots are operated remotely by human technicians who supervise the AI that controls them and who can step in if the devices get stuck on a particular task. The supervisors wear VR goggles that allow them to see through the bots’ eyes into people’s spaces.
Tau’s robot “cannot do everything on its own,” Koch said. “It doesn’t know how to walk upstairs, for example. It doesn’t know where to vacuum. That’s directed by mostly humans at the moment.”
Safety and security concerns
Ken Goldberg, an engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who researches robotics and automation, said that humanoid robots are still relatively clumsy at this stage in their development, even with remote human assistance.
“They look quite nimble, but they are actually quite heavy,” he said, noting that robots can fall over. And as they attempt to get back up, they may thrash around and accidentally hit anyone in close proximity.
“You wouldn’t want this thing anywhere near a child or a baby,” Goldberg said.
Even if the robot is standing, meanwhile, humans may still want to keep their distance. Goldberg said if someone attempts to pick up one of the bots, it can reach out and pinch them with its grippers — robot lingo for hands.
Koch said Tau’s fleet of human technicians is monitoring to prevent humans and humanoid robots from getting too close. If anything goes awry, the technician can put the device into safety mode, which essentially shuts it down by prompting it to lie down on the floor, he said.
Koch said Tau plans to phase out technicians when the bots reach a higher level of self-sufficiency — sometime around 2028 or 2029, he estimated. Until then, it’s a learning process.
“We’re still pushing the limits of what it can do, so we are not entirely sure ourselves where the limits are,” he said.
A Tau Robotics humanoid robot cleaning the inside of a refrigerator. Tau Robotics
In addition to safety concerns, experts have also raised questions about security and privacy issues around the use of robots.
Outfitted with two cameras as eyes, Tau’s robots record videos that are used to train the company’s AI and improve the technology’s functionality. However, the humanoids’ cameras could potentially capture footage of personal items in people’s homes, such as receipts and bills, Goldberg said, potentially violating their privacy.
Asked about security protocols for its products, Koch said Tau has “full control” over the data it collects. “The camera system, the networking and the computers are all our own,” he said.
Humanoids in the home?
The humanoid robot industry is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years as investors pour more money into artificial intelligence. Barclays Investment Bank predicts that the market, now valued at $2 billion to $3 billion, could grow to $200 billion by 2035.
A separate analysis by Morgan Stanley Research released last year estimates that the humanoid robot population will reach nearly 1 billion by 2050. However, the investment bank said prices will need to decline significantly, and societal acceptance of the bots will need to increase before such devices make their way into homes.
For now, most humanoid robots are being used for other purposes. Barclays estimates that 15,000 such robots were deployed in 2025, 90% of which were used in industrial settings such as manufacturing and warehousing.
Zornitsa Todorova, an analyst at Barclays, predicted that deployment of the technology will be “gradual and incremental” and that “meaningful adoption” will take at least five years. As the robots’ capabilities improve, Todorova believes interest in home applications will spike.
“While adoption remains at an early stage today, the economic opportunity for humanoids performing service-oriented tasks is significant,” she said in an email.
Goldberg is more skeptical. He estimated that it will take another decade for the science to get to the level it needs to for the robots to effectively perform at-home services like cleaning.
“I’m not saying we will never have them,” he said. “But we’re not close to having humanoid butlers. The science isn’t there yet.”
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