New York technology company Tuesday Labs has debuted its first semi-autonomous robot Voxel Series-1, designed to help with household chores and to avoid the appearance of an "uncanny valley" humanoid robot.
Voxel Series-1 (Voxel) performs tasks such as watering plants and sweeping crumbs, which it currently achieves with a combination of autonomous intelligence and teleoperation.
The robot is counter-height and covered in a colourful matte plastic shell with primarily "cuboid" body parts, LED eyes and 1-DOF grippers for hands. Tuesday Labs founder Rosalind Shinkle told Dezeen that initial designs were informed by home objects such as lamps, chairs and briefcases.
Working with former Pixar character designer Alonso Martinez, Shinkle said the finalised Voxel is a combination of "exceptional capability and charming character".
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"We deliberately didn’t build a humanoid," Shinkle said. "We wanted to stay far from the uncanny valley, and far from robots that fill a human-shaped space in the home."
"Instead, we made Voxel relatively small and cuboid, to signal his role in your life: a droid butler, not a human butler."
"We know we don’t want him to feel almost-human, and we know we don’t want him to feel like a toaster," she continued. "A believable character needs every element sitting at roughly the same point on that human–toaster spectrum."
Shinkle said five key principles drove the design of Voxel, including easy integration into the home, a maximalist appearance, simplicity, luxury and playfulness.
Part of the strategy was also "affordance matching", or that, when Voxel is perceived by a human, its capabilities can be inherently understood.
"When someone looks at a robot, they should be able to roughly predict what he’s capable of," Shinkle said. "If you correctly match perceived and actual affordance, you can avoid that constant feeling of disappointment when a humanoid robot isn’t quite as good at doing things as a human."
Voxel's plastic shell and finishes are meant to keep it relatively lightweight, but Shinkle said the external design should also communicate its quality.
Like another home robot that is currently in production, Neo by 1X Technologies, Voxel's initial customers are "early adopters" who opt in to help informally train the robot's autonomous software at home.
"We're starting with a limited number of robots for early adopters who are excited to experience and help shape this technology," she said.
"Voxel’s estimated price is $20,000, so he will be a luxury product. But our ambition is much bigger – as the technology improves and production scales, we want to make household robots accessible to far more people."
Shinkle said her own distaste for household chores was part of what drove Voxel.
"Robots will soon be a part of our homes," she said. "I set out to build the robot that I would actually want to live with."
"Also, I hate cleaning my apartment, and I'd much rather spend my time building something that solves that problem once and for all."
Voxel is powered by a rechargeable battery and will charge in an at-home docking station as part of "his normal routine".
Tuesday Labs is based in New York City and was founded in 2025 by Shinkle, who previously worked as an engineer at Boston Dynamics. The studio is focused on creating "robots that feel natural and delightful to live with".
The combination of advanced technology and autonomous intelligence has made the creation of robots more possible than ever at this point in history.
This has allowed the field to diversify, and technology companies and studios have released a varity of different types of robots in recent years, including all the cute robots from CES 2025 and five that were displayed at Carlo Ratti’s architecture biennale.
Other recent home robots that debuted include Neo by 1X Technologies and CLOiD by LG.
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