- Weave Robotics Isaac 1 is now on pre-order
- It promises to autonomously handle basic household chores
- The roughly $8,000, legless robot arrives in the US first
With its Baymax-esque face, cool hues, and mostly soft body rolling on a wheeled base, Weave Isaac 1 cuts a distinct figure from most humanoid robots. It’s just cute/homely enough to attract the robot-curious while avoiding the dangerous uncanny valley of, say, UBTech UWorld U1.
That’s probably a good thing. Weave, which has been building robots like this for a few years, is finally ready to fully commercialize its offerings with the $7,999 (around £6,000 / AU$11,600) Isaac 1. Far from the overreach of many AI-backed bots that promise not only to handle home chores but also to be your empathetic companions, Isaac 1 has smaller goals.
Its features can be boiled down to household drudgery you probably hate to do, including:
- Laundry
- Finding and picking up “dirty” clothes (it’s not clear it knows how they are dirty)
- Hamper duty
- Folding and putting away the clean clothes (missing here is setting up and running the washing machine or dryer)
- It can make your bed
- Fluff the pillows
- Clean up the clutter (shoes, toys, etc)
It’s a good list, but despite Isaac 1’s autonomous capabilities, also limited. So much so that Weave Robotics promises teleoperation to help it complete some tasks. For anything you want it to do, you launch it in a connected smartphone app. After that, it rises up from a 3ft tall crouch at its charging base to its full 5 ft 9 in height and rolls out to get the job done.
In the launch video, Isaac appears to move slowly and methodically, but it might be a bit steadier than, say, the likes of Tesla Optimus, Neo Beta, Unitree G1, and Figure 03, all of which are built to replicate human bipedal walking. Those robots get better and better at walking, running, and dancing, but, as we’ve seen, they can be more unpredictable.
In addition, all those extra actuators and sensors required for walking tend to make these bots more expensive (they can run from $12k to $ 20k or more). With its wheeled base and sensors to autonomously navigate your home, Weave’s Isaac 1 appears steadier and is far cheaper than many of these potential home helper or companion robots.
While Isaac 1 is ready to fold your laundry, it will do so without the use of fingers. Instead, Isaac 1 will manage laundry and other chores with a couple of orange claws (and reportedly run for eight hours on a charge). The rest of the body is covered in soft, removable body plates in muted colors like Sage, Gray, Slate Blue, Terracotta, and Vesper.
Like other robotics companies, Weave Robotics is offering a subscription plan: $449 a month (which equates to about £340 / AU$650 a month), which you would pay in perpetuity, but that might also ensure perpetual updates. Getting one, though, starts with a $250 deposit, and deliveries are expected to begin in September, but only in California. Other areas in the US will follow, according to the company, in 2027.
Isaac 1 won’t ever be mistaken for a human, but perhaps that’s the point. In the rush to recreate and automate humanity, most robotics companies seem to have forgotten that humans respond best to other real, flesh-and-blood humans and, at a fundamental level, reject artifice and hardware that resembles but can never be us.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
