SwitchBot’s new Onero H1 home robot claims it can help with laundry. The bigger story is practical as AI is being built to handle everyday mess.
Most “AI at home” still lives in a screen or a speaker. It answers questions. It sets timers. It plays music.
SwitchBot is pitching something different: AI with hands.
On January 4, 2026, SwitchBot announced Onero H1 ahead of CES 2026. It’s a household robot on wheels with arms and hands, positioned as a general helper for chores around the house.
Why everyone keeps saying “laundry”
Laundry is a perfect test because it’s normal, boring, and brutally hard for robots.
Clothes don’t stay stiff. They flop. They wrinkle. They hide corners. They slide out of a robot’s grip. And every home is different: different baskets, different closets, different layouts.
SwitchBot’s materials show Onero H1 doing laundry-like steps—loading a washer, folding clothes, putting them away—plus other tasks like wiping windows and making coffee.
One important reality check: demos can be cleaner than real life. What looks good in a video still needs real testing in messy environments.
What’s new here, without the jargon
SwitchBot says the robot uses on-device AI and multiple cameras so it can:
see what’s in front of it, understand what you want, and try to do it with its arms and hands.
That’s the big shift.
Older home robots tend to be “one routine, one job” machines: vacuum the floor in a mapped pattern, or mop in a set route.
This is trying to be more like: “Here’s a goal. Figure it out.”
Why it’s on wheels (and why that’s smart)
Onero H1 isn’t walking like a sci-fi humanoid. It moves on wheels.
That matters because wheels are stable and practical. You can focus the engineering on what people actually want: the hands.
SwitchBot says it has 22 degrees of freedom, which basically means a lot of joints that can move in different ways—helpful for handling objects more carefully.
The business point: the robot doesn’t have to do everything
SwitchBot also sells a bunch of smart-home devices. It positions Onero H1 as something that can work with that ecosystem.
That’s a realistic near-term vision for home robots: A robot that can do a few physical things (pick up, carry, load, tidy) and trigger everything else (turn on devices, run routines, coordinate the home).
In other words: orchestration plus a little physical help may win before “robot does your whole house” becomes real.
Final thoughts
This isn’t a “humanoids are solved” moment. SwitchBot hasn’t announced pricing and says preorders are coming soon. But it is a clear signal. If companies are willing to headline laundry, they’re saying: we think home AI is ready to graduate from conversation to chores.
Three things worth watching next:
Will the robot work in real homes, not just controlled demos?
Will “wheels + arms” beat “full humanoid walking” as the practical consumer design?
Will the winners be the companies that already own the smart-home ecosystem—and can turn robots into the hub that makes everything else feel automatic?
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