6 week update from the Shenzhen robot cleaning pilot. Still running, no recall, footage looks less staged than launch
Quick update for anyone tracking the 58 / X Square Robot home cleaning service in Shenzhen.
Launched mid March, still active, customers can still book through the 58 home services app. Robot side is mostly a wheeled dual arm Quanta platform doing the structured bits, human cleaner handles judgment work.
Two things stand out vs the launch coverage.
One, the bots in the recent footage are visibly handling more without intervention. At launch a lot of the wiping passes needed a human to pre stage the surface. The newer clips show it picking up small clutter (a sock, a piece of cereal, what looked like a kids book) before wiping, which is the part most robot vac people thought was years off.
Two, the failure mode footage is also out there now and it is unglamorous in a believable way. Robot gets stuck on a high pile rug, robot misreads a glass coffee table as floor, robot needs the human to physically rotate it once because it boxed itself into a corner near the fridge. None of those are surprising, but the fact that the footage exists and was not airbrushed is the part I find interesting. Compare to certain other humanoid demo cycles.
Six weeks of real apartments is not a victory lap, but it is a different signal than "video at trade show" which is most of what this industry runs on.
Pretty sure the same pilot expands to Beijing next, will post if I see confirmation.