This home robot cleans tables and loads the dishwasher by itself

Note may not Be the world’s fastest barista, yet impressive for a robot.

I recently watched Memo, a new home robot from a company called Sunday Robotics, prepare coffee in an open kitchen in Mountain View, California.

Memo looks like something out of Wall-E, with a bright white body, arms, a friendly cartoon face, and a red baseball cap. Instead of using legs as a fully human robot does, Memo moves around using a wheeled platform and changes its height by moving a central column up and down on top of that platform.

The robot responded to an espresso request by rolling onto a work surface, then using pincer-like hands to slowly go through each step required to operate an espresso machine. She filled the portafilter with ground coffee, tamped it, then slid the portafilter into place, placed a coffee cup at the bottom, pressed the necessary buttons to start the machine, and finally retrieved the hot brew.

“We want to build robots that free people from doing the laundry, from the dishes, from all the housework,” Tony Chow, co-founder and CEO of Sunday Robotics, told me as the robot brought coffee to the person who ordered it.

Making a cup of espresso may not sound amazing, but this is a difficult feat for a robot to pull off in a messy, real kitchen. It requires the ability to recognize different objects, know how to hold them reliably, and use those objects correctly. Not only does Sunday build his own hardware, he also trains the models that allow his system to learn. “We think the way to make a home robot is for it to be integrated, and for it to be vertically integrated,” says Zhao. “This is very ambitious.”