Make California Post a Preferred Source Forget the backflips and dance moves.
A California robotics company has unveiled a humanoid machine with a far less flashy mission: doing the laundry and other everyday chores.
Redwood City-based Dyna Robotics this week introduced Taku, a “full-stack physical agent” designed to handle entire real-world workflows from start to finish.
Named after the Japanese word Takumi (匠), meaning master of a craft, the robot is built to do the kind of mundane work that could make it useful in hotels, restaurants and warehouses.
Taku can load washing machines, fold towels, chop vegetables, stock shelves and tackle other tasks, according to the company.
Standing roughly as tall as an average adult, the machine is designed to operate in spaces built for humans. Its arms can also move at nearly human speed, allowing it to work without dragging down the pace.
Lindon Gao, CEO of Dyna Robotics, said the machine addresses a major problem with existing robots: the need for constant human supervision.
“If a human still has to feed the robot, clear it, reset it, and fix everything that goes wrong, then the robot hasn’t completed a whole job,” Gao said in an announcement video.
He added that people “want someone who can actually get things done end to end.”
The robot features a human-shaped upper body with two arms, each boasting seven degrees of freedom, and a folding lower body that lets it reach both high and low surfaces.
But don’t expect to see this machine strolling around on two legs. Instead, it rolls on four steerable wheels, a deliberate design choice that the company says better suits the work it is meant to perform.
To demonstrate how the machine actually works, the company published an unedited, hour-long video of the robot handling an entire hotel laundry room on its own.
Taku walks between washers, dryers, folding tables, and shelves placed meters apart. It reaches deep inside dryer drums, grabbing leftover towels from washers, twisting while holding laundry, and crouching low or reaching high to stack shelves.
Along with laundry, the robot can also handle tasks like servicing hardware or retrieving a drink from a refrigerator. The company has not shared any details about how many Taku units are ready to be deployed or what the robot will cost.
