I'm not at CES this year to see LG's new CLOiD AI-powered home robot in the flesh, but from this side of the Pacific I am remarkably sceptical about this type of product actually taking off.
LG has officially unveiled LG CLOiD at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, showcasing what the company calls its "Zero Labour Home" vision: a future where robots handle the mundane tasks of everyday housework, freeing us up for more meaningful activities.
It sounds good on paper, but we've been here before with home robotics promises that never quite materialise in our actual homes.
The CLOiD robot itself is substantial. It's a wheeled base robot with autonomous navigation (borrowed from LG's robot vacuum tech), a tilting torso, two articulated arms with seven degrees of freedom each, which matches human arm mobility, and five-fingered hands for precise manipulation.
The head serves as a mobile AI home hub, complete with cameras, sensors, a display, a speaker, and voice-based generative AI that allows it to communicate and even display "facial expressions."
At CES, LG demonstrated CLOiD retrieving milk from a fridge, popping a croissant in the oven for breakfast, then later starting the laundry, folding clothes, and stacking them neatly.
These tasks showcase the robot's vision-based Physical AI technology, which combines a Vision Language Model (VLM) to understand what it's seeing and Vision Language Action (VLA) to translate that understanding into physical actions. LG claims this AI has been trained on tens of thousands of hours of household task data.
The robot integrates with LG's ThinQ ecosystem, allowing it to coordinate with other connected LG appliances throughout the home. In theory, this creates a seamless smart home experience where CLOiD orchestrates everything from your morning coffee to your evening wash cycle.
Alongside CLOiD, LG also introduced LG Actuator AXIUM, a new brand of robotic actuators (essentially the joints that make robots move) for service robots. LG is leveraging its decades of experience building home appliance components to create lightweight, high-efficiency actuators that can be customised for different robotic applications, positioning itself not just as a robot maker, but as a component supplier for the broader Physical AI industry.
A promising future or empty promises?
As much as sci-fi movies over the years have me excited for a future of worker robots doing my chores for me, I honestly can't see them ever becoming mainstream successful.
We've seen countless home robot concepts over the years, from robots that fold laundry to ones that serve drinks, and none have made it beyond the demo stage into actual homes at scale. The best we have are robot vacuums, which can still (regularly) get stuck under furniture or tangled on a charging cable.
Of course, the challenges with home-based robots are immense. Every home is different, with unpredictable household objects. And of course, these things are going to cost an absolute fortune if they ever make it into homes.
While the wheeled base might be more cost-effective than legs, seven-degree-of-freedom arms with five-fingered hands can't possibly come cheap. Add in the AI processing power, sensors, and integration requirements, and you're likely looking at a price tag that would make most households pause.
There's also the question of reliability and adaptability. Demo environments are controlled and optimised. Real homes are chaotic. Will CLOiD gracefully handle my mismatched cutlery drawer, or will it have an existential crisis?
LG's broader roadmap does sound more pragmatic. The company plans to expand its robotics technology into "Appliance Robots" (like robot vacuums, which have actually succeeded) and "Robotised Appliances" (like fridges with automatic doors). This feels like a more realistic path to the "AI Home" than expecting a single humanoid robot to handle everything.
"The LG CLOiD home robot is designed to naturally engage with and understand the humans it serves, providing an optimised level of household help," said Steve Baek, president of LG's Home Appliance Solution Company. "We will continue our relentless efforts to achieve our Zero Labour Home vision, making housework a thing of the past so that customers can spend more time on the things that really matter."
It's a lovely vision, and I genuinely hope LG proves me wrong. A robot that could reliably handle laundry and meal prep would be amazing. But I doubt we will ever see CLOiD as a product you can buy at your local Good Guys store.
For now, CLOiD remains what most home robots have been: a demonstration of what's technically possible, rather than a product you will ever be able to buy or rely on.
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