Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher?

Eggie, Neo, Isaac and Memo are domestic robots. But would you let them load your dishwasher?

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BBC NEO the domestic robot is launching to customers this year

The idea of having a friendly robot butler that can do all the dull duties of running a home has existed for decades. But now, thanks to AI, it's genuinely happening and this year the first truly multi-purpose domestic bots will start to enter homes. In Silicon Valley, they're being trained at speed to fold laundry, load the dishwasher, and clean up after us. Their excitable human creators are making big promises but I wanted to see how realistic the idea of a robot housekeeper really is. So I went to meet Eggie, NEO, Isaac and Memo.

Tangible AI Eggie the robot can slowly do many household chores - but it is controlled by a human

It is impossible not to smile when one of these humanoid or partly humanoid (no legs) bots enters a room. The overall state of play is that many of them are now agile, sensitive and dextrous enough to carry out many important (and tedious) chores. We watched as Eggie the robot from relatively fresh start-up Tangible AI hung up a jacket on a coat stand, stripped a bed and wiped up a spill on the kitchen counter. But it did it very slowly, rolling around on wheels in a stuttering movement. Likewise NEO from 1X - which recently caused a stir by launching pre-orders for its robot - was able to slowly but effectively plod around the firm's test kitchen on its soft padded feet.

Watch NEO the robot watering plants

It watered plants (with one spillage), fetched me a drink and tidied away dishes and cups (with some help from me as it struggled to grip the cupboard handles). If time was no issue, I could see how having an Eggie or NEO-like bot cleaning up after me and my kids might be helpful. But NEO and Eggie have a secret weapon - they are being controlled by human operators. This is the thing the promotional videos don't show - and something that the Silicon Valley companies we visited are keen to downplay. Bipasha Sen, founder of Tangible AI, is upbeat though about how fast the tech is improving. "Today people have two aspirations - a car and a house. In the future they'll have three aspirations - a car and house and a robot," she says with a beaming smile. Across town, 1X is a company that has major financial backing from tech giants including microchip maker Nvidia.

1X Operators remotely control NEO using VR headsets and sensors to carry out tasks and train the bot

At their plush headquarters, we were given a tour of a restricted area where NEO prototypes are being built, tested and repaired. Norwegian CEO Bernt Børnich says NEO is very useful in his own home, busily hoovering and tidying up after his family, which he says is "a mix" of autonomous action and human-operated. "We have a lot of data so a lot of the stuff in my home can get automated but periodically someone kind of steps in and helps," he says. Data is key to how these robots are learning to navigate our chaotic home environments - a much tougher task than humanoids designed for factories. Part of 1X's plans to improve NEO's AI brains is to get it out to homes this year. 1X is confident that NEO will be far more capable on its own thanks to recent AI developments. But we weren't shown any demos of the bot thinking for itself. The first wave of customers will probably have to be very patient and not that worried about privacy with human operators remotely controlling it when the bot gets confused. They will also have to be wealthy as NEO will cost around $20,000 or $500 a month. "A lot of our early customers are people who will actually have a lot of value from this, but I do think getting the right customers is important. We can use these amazing early adopters to help us make this work," Børnich says.

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