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Chinese robotics company GigaAI has deployed the first batch of 100 SeeLight S1 humanoid robots into household environments, launching what Chinese media describe as the country's first large-scale real-home trial of a general-purpose household robot.
The Wuhan-based company says the project is designed to test whether humanoid machines can handle the messy and unpredictable reality of daily life rather than perform carefully staged demonstrations.
According to reports from Global Times and China Daily, the robots have already begun operating in model homes, where they carry out routine chores such as preparing meals, loading the dishwasher, folding laundry, and organizing wardrobes.
The deployment marks a significant step for China's growing humanoid robotics industry, which is increasingly focused on bringing embodied artificial intelligence into homes.
Teaching robots to handle everyday life
Inside a demonstration apartment in Wuhan, two SeeLight S1 robots worked simultaneously on different tasks.
One robot prepared breakfast by retrieving food, heating chicken in a microwave, clearing dishes, and loading them into a dishwasher. Another removed clothes from a dryer, folded them, and placed them in a wardrobe. According to the company, the robots learned these tasks through less than a month of on-site training.
Unlike conventional machines that follow fixed instructions, GigaAI says the SeeLight S1 relies on an embodied foundation model that allows it to perceive its surroundings, understand spoken commands, plan actions, and execute tasks independently.
"It is not completing pre-written scripts. The robot forms a complete loop from perception, to understanding, and to action. A user can give it a natural-language command, and it can interpret the request, plan the necessary steps, control its body to carry them out, and continue learning through real-world use," Zhu Zheng, GigaAI co-founder, chief scientist and CEO of the SeeLight brand, told Global Times.
The company also says the robot can adjust when furniture is moved and continue working even if interrupted during a task.
Why homes are a bigger challenge than factories
While humanoid robots have become increasingly skilled at performing dances, flips, and other choreographed routines, experts say household work presents a far greater technical challenge.
Factories operate in controlled environments with predictable layouts and repetitive tasks. Homes are different. Furniture moves, lighting changes, objects are misplaced, and every family follows its own routines.
"Tasks such as dancing or performing flips mainly rely on what we can call the robot's 'cerebellum'. Many of these capabilities can be trained through reinforcement learning in virtual environments, and the technology path is relatively mature," Zhu told Global Times. "Household robots, however, depend on the 'brain.' They must understand their surroundings, plan tasks, execute operations, and continuously learn in highly variable household environments. That requires far stronger generalization across scenarios and tasks."
Researchers say this challenge reflects Moravec's paradox, a long-standing observation in artificial intelligence that machines often find seemingly simple physical tasks more difficult than complex intellectual ones.
Li Yonglu, an associate professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, told Global Times that robots still struggle with activities humans perform naturally, including grasping objects and folding clothes.
Progress made, but limitations remain
Despite the promising demonstrations, the robots are still far from becoming fully capable household assistants.
Reports cited by Global Times noted that some tasks remain slow and inefficient. Organizing a few books can take more than five minutes, while folding a single piece of clothing may require over ten minutes. Users have also reported that the robot can spill water when attempting to pick up a mug.
Experts say such limitations highlight the gap between controlled demonstrations and practical household deployment.
"The emergence of still-developing household robots has also prompted people to reassess the value of domestic labor," Li said, according to Global Times. "Many chores that appear simple are, in fact, among the hardest tasks for robots to replace."
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