This week, the Chinese company GigaAI unveiled the country’s first universal household robot, the SeeLight S1, which has a humanoid form.
According to the South China Morning Post, a hundred of these robots will be tested in a residential complex for high-tech workers starting at the end of this month.
According to a statement by GigaAI CEO Zhu Zheng, as early as the first half of 2027, the robots will be made available for free testing to families in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei Province.
A video released this week demonstrated how a two-armed robot on wheels performs various household tasks: cutting vegetables, frying eggs, loading the washing machine, hanging laundry, making the bed, and opening the curtains.
The developer plans to lower the price of the SeeLight S1 to below 100,000 yuan (about $14,700) by June 2027, which is half its current cost.
Zheng expects such robots to achieve a significant breakthrough in the commercialization and development of AI-based capabilities by 2028.
Unlike robots operating on production lines with pre-programmed algorithms, the S1 has the ability to independently understand tasks and plan their execution thanks to embedded AI models.
Read also: Hyundai has unveiled a new humanoid robot, Atlas, designed for work in automotive factories.
Zhen emphasized that for safety reasons, the robot is equipped with a "compatible control mechanism" that allows it to immediately stop performing actions upon detecting a danger.
