Yes, a robot can clean your kitchen. A human is still driving it.

Tau Robotics, a San Francisco startup, is renting humanoid robots to clean homes for $30 an hour. A human operator in the same city is driving every move through the robot's cameras.

The robots vacuum, wipe kitchen counters, take out the trash, clean spills, and pick items up off the floor. Each job is supervised by a remote human, with the company framing full autonomy as a future goal rather than a current capability, according to the SF Chronicle.

At $30 an hour, the customer is paying for teleoperator labor in a humanoid chassis, not autonomy. The humanoid form factor earns its premium only on tasks a $300 robot vacuum cannot do: wiping counters, cleaning spills, picking things up, taking out the trash. A vacuum-shaped bot with a mop pad is still cheaper for the floor.

The company says it plans to expand into home repairs and elderly care, and to reach full autonomy over time. Booking is invite-only, with a public waitlist on the Tau Robotics site.

Separately, the FCC recently banned imports of new foreign-made humanoid robots and power inverters on national security grounds, a policy backdrop that does not affect Tau's all-in-San-Francisco operation but explains the broader attention on the category.