Laundry

The short answer: no robot is yet established doing laundry in customers’ homes anywhere. Two robots sold in mainland China have been shown operating a washing machine; two more are on preorder in the US; one is listed as “Coming Soon” in the US and the EU; and several have been shown handling clothes in videos and at trade shows. The most complete laundry demonstrations (taking clothes out of a machine, folding them and putting them away) come from robots that are not yet on sale anywhere.

This site has not tested any of these robots. Everything below comes from what vendors and the press have published, labelled by how well it is established.

What the task involves, and why it is hard for a robot

“Doing the laundry” is several jobs chained together: finding clothes around the house, getting them into a washing machine and dryer, taking them out, folding each item and putting it in the right drawer. Machines already handle the washing itself. The hard part for a robot is everything around the machine.

Clothes are soft. A shirt has no fixed shape: it changes every time it is picked up, it crumples, it hides its own sleeves, and two items in a pile look like one. Robotics researchers describe handling soft, shape-changing objects as considerably harder than handling rigid ones, needing advances in hardware, sensing, planning and control all at once.¹ That is why a robot that handles boxes well can still struggle with a towel.

Homes add their own difficulty: clothes are on floors, chairs and in hampers, in varying light, among other clutter.²

What the state of the art actually is

The claims below are graded on three levels, the same ones used on every robot page:

• Shipped: the vendor says customers are using the robot for this.
• Demonstrated: shown in video, at an event or to the press, but not established in customers’ homes.
• Claimed: stated, but not yet shown.

No laundry claim in this site’s data is at the shipped level. Every robot on this page is either demonstrated or claimed for laundry.

Among the demonstrations, most show one part of the chain, not the whole of it: loading a machine, or folding, or picking clothes up. Whether a demonstration was fully autonomous, partly guided by a remote human operator, or repeated many times to get a clean take is usually not stated by the vendor. Where it is known, it is on the robot’s page.

Which robots attempt it

On preorder in the US

• Isaac 1 (Weave Robotics): laundry is one of its two named task routines. Weave describes “Laundry Flow” as finding and picking up dirty clothes, including from a loaded hamper, folding them and putting them away, and says it “may also load or unload a washer/dryer depending on home setup”. Demonstrated. Weave states the robot works autonomously by default, with a remote human operator stepping in when needed.
• NEO (1X Technologies): 1X lists “Folds laundry, organizes shelves, and tidies spaces” among NEO’s chores. Demonstrated. For chores NEO has not learned, 1X offers a remote human operator to guide it.

Announced, not yet on sale

• onero H1 (SwitchBot): shown loading a washing machine: grasping laundry, pushing it in, and opening and closing the door. Demonstrated, and seen by independent press at two trade shows. Listed as “Coming Soon” in the US and in SwitchBot’s EU store, and planned for sale in Japan.
• Memo (Sunday Robotics): shown folding socks from a pile of laundry. Demonstrated. Sunday is recruiting households for an invite-only trial, and says Memo will not be for sale until that trial is complete.

In a home trial in China, not on sale

• SeeLight S1 (GigaAI): according to press reports, shown removing laundry from a dryer, folding it and putting it away in a wardrobe. Demonstrated, but these accounts come from the press, not from the vendor, and are marked unconfirmed.

On sale in mainland China only

• Futuring 2 (Futuring Robot): the vendor says the robot operates washing machines and dryers as part of its tidying tasks. Demonstrated. Other Futuring 2 chores are at the shipped level; this one is not.
• Bajie (Ecovacs): shown starting and operating a washing machine. Demonstrated. Ecovacs sells Bajie as an open development platform rather than as a finished household product.

What a buyer should realistically expect today

Outside mainland China, there is no laundry robot you can have in your home this year unless a US preorder delivers on time. In mainland China, the robots on sale have been shown operating a washing machine, but neither vendor says customers are using them for laundry. The two US preorders, Isaac 1 and NEO, both rely on a remote human operator, working for the vendor, for some of the work. Ask the vendor how and when that happens before ordering.

Expect demonstrations to be of the easiest version of each step. Folding a single T-shirt is not the same as working through a mixed basket that includes fitted sheets and socks. A robot that loads a machine may not also unload it, and one that folds may not also put away.

Since 28 July 2026, a US rule has barred new foreign-produced advanced robots from receiving the authorisation needed to be imported, marketed or sold, unless they qualify for an exemption or an approval. Models authorised before that date may still be sold, but may not be modified except for certain software and firmware updates.³⁴ Whether that affects a particular robot is recorded on its page, and for most it is not yet known.

Notes

1. Zhu et al., “Challenges and Outlook in Robotic Manipulation of Deformable Objects”, arXiv, 2021-12-14. https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.01767 ↩

2. The Ohio State University News (Ayonga Hereid), “Why household robot servants are so hard to build”, 2022-09-22. https://news.osu.edu/why-household-robot-servants-are-so-hard-to-build/ ↩

3. Sidley Austin, “FCC Adds All Foreign-Produced Advanced Robotic Devices to the Covered List”, 2026-08-07. https://www.sidley.com/en/insights/newsupdates/2026/08/fcc-adds-all-foreign-produced-advanced-robotic-devices-to-the-covered-list ↩

4. Wiley Rein, “FCC Adds Foreign-Produced Power Inverters and Advanced Robotic Devices to the Covered List”, 2026-07-30. https://www.wiley.law/alert-FCC-Adds-Foreign-Produced-Power-Inverters-and-Advanced-Robotic-Devices-to-the-Covered-List ↩