Show HN: We sent a humanoid robot to clean a stranger's apartment in SF

#1

Post by frishberg » Fri, May 15, 2026, 6:15 AM UTC

Hey HN, Aron here, founder of Gatsby. Today (May 14, 2026) we made U.S. history with the first humanoid robot cleaning service delivered to a consumer in the US — we picked someone off our SF waitlist, drove a humanoid to their apartment, and it cleaned the place.

Pricing is $150 flat in SF, any size apartment. Cleaning took a few hours including setup.

Curious to hear any thoughts and happy to answer any questions.

Show HN: We sent a humanoid robot to clean a stranger's apartment in SF
gatsby.bot

Re: Show HN: We sent a humanoid robot to clean a stranger's apartment in SF

#2

Post by binarycleric » Fri, May 15, 2026, 6:20 AM UTC

Genuine question. Define cleaning? Does it mostly wipe off surfaces or can it also do things like scrub toilets, make beds, take out trash, etc?

Also is this fully automated or is someone sitting in an office with a VR headset? How monitored is the whole process?

Lastly, specs on the robot you used in the landing page? I'm genuinely curious.

When I get back to SF in a few weeks I may hit you up. My place could use a deep cleaning.

Re: Show HN: We sent a humanoid robot to clean a stranger's apartment in SF

#3

Post by binyang_qiu » Fri, May 15, 2026, 6:41 AM UTC

Awesome job! It really frees up my hands. As another reviewer mentioned, I’m so curious to know exactly what this robot can do when cleaning a room, how thoroughly it cleans, and who can monitor its status and how.

Re: Show HN: We sent a humanoid robot to clean a stranger's apartment in SF

#4

Post by chfritz » Fri, May 15, 2026, 3:17 PM UTC

binarycleric wrote: post #2

Genuine question. Define cleaning? Does it mostly wipe off surfaces or can it also do things like scrub toilets, make beds, take out trash, etc? Also is this fully automated or is someone sitting in an office with a VR headset? How monitored is the whole process? Lastly, specs on the robot you used in the landing page? I'm genuinely curious. When I get back to SF in a few weeks I may hit you up. My place could use a…

Almost definitely 100% teleoperated -- the robot might move between places autonomously, but all the manipulation tasks, i.e., the actual cleaning, is not something anyone yet knows how to do autonomously reliably. And that's OK. However I'd like to know whether the data you gather from these cleanings is shared with other companies (who would be willing to pay a lot of money for it in order to train their own physical AI models).

Re: Show HN: We sent a humanoid robot to clean a stranger's apartment in SF

#5

Post by XCSme » Mon, May 18, 2026, 2:29 PM UTC

chfritz wrote: post #4

binarycleric wrote: post #2

Genuine question. Define cleaning? Does it mostly wipe off surfaces or can it also do things like scrub toilets, make beds, take out trash, etc? Also is this fully automated or is someone sitting in an office with a VR headset? How monitored is the whole process? Lastly, specs on the robot you used in the landing page? I'm genuinely curious. When I get back to SF in a few weeks I may hit you up. My place could use a…

Almost definitely 100% teleoperated -- the robot might move between places autonomously, but all the manipulation tasks, i.e., the actual cleaning, is not something anyone yet knows how to do autonomously reliably. And that's OK. However I'd like to know whether the data you gather from these cleanings is shared with other companies (who would be willing to pay a lot of money for it in order to train their own physic…

> Almost definitely 100% teleoperated

Looking at X Ai's Figure parcel sorting live-stream, the current robots seem way too clumsy to even pick up an object, I doubt they are precise enough to do scrubbing.