After about a decade in the making, Palo Alto-based robotics company 1X is almost ready with its Neo humanoid, which is designed to help you with housework and other tasks around the home. It will ship sometime next year, and you can pre-order one to buy it right away, or pay a monthly subscription fee.
We took a good look at the beta version of the Neo last September; in February this year, a more refined version appeared in a demo video showing the washing and serving of coffee.
It is billed as being able to move around the house (including climbing stairs) and perform some chores autonomously; It can also see things and answer questions with the context of who and what is in your home, retrieve items on demand, and charge itself when the battery is low.
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The 1X marketing team certainly did their best to make this look completely normal. Watch the indie band’s music video-style promo below, which shows how the Neo lends a hand to families around the house:
NEO The home robot | Order today
The overarching idea behind this robot housekeeper, according to 1X, is to give families more time to do what matters most to them. While it will be able to perform a range of chores autonomously at launch next year, it will continually learn to adapt to your needs and take on more diverse tasks over time with software updates.
1X
You can schedule a list of chores through a companion app on your phone, or simply tell Neo what needs to be done around the house. Your commands can be specific, such as ’empty the dishwasher’ and ‘open the door’ (don’t forget to alert your guests to the presence of a robot first), or more general, such as ‘organize the hall’ and ‘clean my bedroom’.
It’s worth noting that Neo’s handiwork won’t be perfect at first. The company’s solution for this is to remotely control your Neo in ‘Expert Mode’, in which someone from the company – a human – supervises the robot and guides it through the task until it is completed, teaching the robot the steps involved. This means that someone can see into your home through the eyes of your robot. I didn’t expect to be typing that today.
1X
1X says that if you buy a Neo – especially one of the first few units – you should be open to the company capturing all kinds of data through the robot with the aim of improving its capabilities. That will be on your terms, in that people in the Neo’s field of view will be blurred in the camera feed, and it won’t venture into restricted zones you’ve set up around your home. However, that means it won’t apply to everyone across the spectrum of privacy concerns at launch.
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What is this humanoid companion made of? The Neo is 167 cm high, weighs 30 kg and runs for 4 hours before needing to recharge itself. It has four microphones, three speakers and two 8-megapixel cameras for hearing, speaking and seeing. A series of high-torque-density motors power tendons so it can move and pick up objects accurately, along with hands that are said to exhibit human-level dexterity with 22 degrees of freedom. It can lift objects weighing up to 70 kg (154 lb) and carry up to 25 kg (55 lb).
All this is packed into a soft body made from custom 3D lattice polymer structures and wrapped in machine washable fabric. There’s also a lot of AI powering his movements, and his ability to understand what he’s looking at and hearing. 1X says the Neo operates at a noise level of 22 dB, which is less than a regular refrigerator.
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The Wall Street Journal’Joanna Stern got to try out the current version of Neo and discovered that it wasn’t actually ready to do much of anything autonomously. In the WSJ videoyou can see how much time it took to complete simple tasks, how it didn’t look confident to load a dishwasher with glassware in five minutes, and how most things required a teleoperator. This will all be refined before shipping – the question is to what extent.
My position on domestic humanoids will evolve as the technologies that power them develop. Right now I have the usual list of concerns in my head about products like the Neo: Will it go rogue and fail due to server outages or bugs? More importantly, 1X doesn’t talk about how it will protect owners from hacking their robots or how it will keep their data private.
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I understand that AI technology companies like to make promises of infinite possibilities with their products right now. But I prefer the certainty of appliances with limitations: I like to know exactly what my washing machine and microwave can do and what they can’t. I’d like the makers of the things I use in my home every day to be deliberate and precise when building those features, rather than enabling a wider variety of capabilities that can’t all run consistently and reliably.
That’s my rant.
If you’re in the US, you can Pre-order the Neo by making a $200 deposit. You can choose to donate $20,000 to purchase your Neo, or sign up for a $499 monthly subscription. It is available in Tan, Gray, and Dark Brown colorways. The robot will come to other markets from 2027.
Source: 1X via Business thread
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