Forget the backflips and choreographed dance routines.
A California robotics company has introduced a humanoid machine with a more practical goal: taking on laundry and other routine household and commercial chores.
Redwood City-based Dyna Robotics unveiled Taku this week, describing it as a “full-stack physical agent” capable of completing real-world workflows from beginning to end.
The robot’s name comes from Takumi (匠), the Japanese word for a master craftsperson. Dyna says Taku is designed for the repetitive work found in hotels, restaurants, warehouses and similar environments.
According to the company, Taku can load washing machines, fold towels, chop vegetables, restock shelves and perform a range of other everyday tasks.
Roughly the height of an average adult, Taku is built to function in spaces designed for people. Its arms can move at nearly human speed, helping the robot maintain the pace of a workplace rather than slowing operations down.
Its main selling point, however, is the promise of working without constant human supervision.
Lindon Gao, Dyna Robotics’ CEO, said existing robots often require people to monitor and intervene in their work, limiting their usefulness.
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“If a human still has to feed the robot, clear it, reset it, and fix everything that goes wrong, then the robot hasn’t completed a whole job,” Gao said in an announcement video.
He added that people “want someone who can actually get things done end to end.”
Taku has a human-like upper body with two arms, each offering seven degrees of freedom. Its lower body folds, allowing it to work across a wide range of heights, from high shelves to low surfaces.
Despite its humanoid form, the machine does not walk on two legs. It moves on four steerable wheels—an intentional choice Dyna says is better suited to the practical tasks Taku is designed to handle.
To show the robot in action, Dyna released an unedited, hour-long video featuring Taku working independently through an entire hotel laundry room.
The robot travels between washers, dryers, folding tables and shelves positioned meters apart. It reaches into dryer drums, removes remaining towels from washing machines, twists while carrying laundry, crouches to work near the floor and stretches upward to stack shelves.
Beyond laundry, Taku is also designed for jobs such as servicing hardware and retrieving drinks from a refrigerator. Dyna Robotics has not disclosed how many units are ready for deployment or how much the robot will cost.
