Robots Are Coming to Multifamily: AI Moves Into the Real World

Taylor HouHonestly, even folding clothes now in a controlled environment is a solved, it's done. That is not a problem whatsoever anymore. Anyone who's deployed robotics, I'll just tell you right now, the question you should be asking is what happens if the robot falls over? If you want robots and AI to be valuable in the future, you want to give it things that humans do.

Jonas BordoThat's Taylor Hou, and I'm Jonas Bordo, and this is NetEffective. Excited to have Taylor on the show today. Taylor and I have gone back quite a number of years now, and he is one of the most creative and entrepreneurial people that I have ever bumped into in any walk of life. And particularly in the prop tech space, he has businesses going on in like five different directions. But today I'm particularly interested to talk to him about his humanoids business, which you can see in the background. There's a lot going on there, Taylor. Welcome. Glad to have you on.

Taylor HouThanks, Jonas. Nice to thanks for inviting me. And yeah.

Jonas BordoSo what do you have going on behind you there, Taylor?

Taylor HouYeah, a lot going on. A lot of these are sleeping, I guess, so they're all charging. so I'm I've asked my team here to like get them, wake them up, get them moving so you guys can see the background. But you can see like here's a humanoid, more like a centaur form factor, so a wheeled base with the humanoid on top, which realistically, and we'll get into this, is likely going to be more the form factor you'll see deployed in real production. And then you also see like a bunch of laying down quadrupeds right now. So quadrupeds being four-legged. We rarely do, not with wheels, but we do have some that, like even this one that's kind of standing up right now, has wheels on the back and legs on the front. It's kind of I actually think it's a little creepy. but you'll you'll see. And then on some other sides here of me, like I have a really big quadruped, right? So we call it the big dog over here. this thing can carry like almost up to 500 pounds on its back.

Jonas BordoWow, that looks strong. Holy moly.

Taylor HouAnd then like next to me here, you know, this one is like a typical cleaning robot. but unlike your consumer one, these have crazy LiDAR, crazy cameras, big, big antenna for telecommunications. They can do, of course, much bigger space than like a house. Like it's intended to do like an entire floor of a commercial building and things like that. I don't know if you I don't know if you look at that one. Yeah. That's fantastic. That's the one that's two wheels, but then two legs, and it starts off as like a quadruped form factor, and then it can stand up kind of like a little kid. But like walking around, like I guess he what he's testing is like now it's like follow me mode or something. But it's quite interesting. It's a little freaky, but it's very interesting.

Jonas BordoYeah. I think that's fantastic. That is you know, it reminds me of like a six-year-old wandering around.

Taylor HouYeah, it's like a six-year-old, but this one like in dance and that's fantastic.

Jonas BordoSo let's talk about this because a couple of months ago, you really blew my mind when we were talking about AI on another call, and you started talking about robots and how AI had just accelerated the progress in robotics after it had been stalled out for a bunch of years. So, what's going on there?

Taylor HouYeah, there's a lot of hype and money going in the US market right now and like robotics in general. Like you hear about world models and training, and now you're you'll hear or like figures is one of the like louder voices in the field right now, where like they're quite literally paying people to like strap cameras on their head and on their hands and just record yourself like doing dishes, right? Or record yourself folding laundry. Interesting. All of that is feeding these like world models where you know, if you kind of think like where AI is, it's slurped up all of the world's text. Any text, no matter what language, like any kind of written anything, and like the images now have been slurped up by AI, right? And the models have been trained on it. Right. So from that perspective, it's the world's smartest, best encyclopedia kind of thing. But then if you also think about, well, there's also a bunch of video too. And having AI train on video is, I don't know what the order of magnitude is, but it is stupidly more expensive and hard to train on video because video is just like if you think about frames per second, right? Like it's 30 frames per second or 60 frames per second, meaning 60 images every second. Like every pixel is being analyzed by AI, right? So if you got a million pixels or a billion pixels and all this kind of stuff, like it gets blown way out of proportion. And so right now, you know, you have some big archives of video, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Disney, Netflix, all these kind of big players, and TikTok, especially, obviously. You now also have, but a lot of those videos are like being produced for human enjoyment or entertainment or news, and not necessarily to record how humans work, right? Or live. And so now you're essentially lacking that kind of data to be able to train on. And if you want robots and AI to be valuable in the future, you want to give it things that humans do. And so right now it's lacking essentially a lot of that kind of footage. And so, figures one of the earlier ones here, like here in China, for example, there's Adribot. they've had floors of teams of like college grads who every day nonstop, all they do is like I saw this, they literally move a ketchup bottle from a cart to a table, like a different spot on a table.

Jonas BordoNo way.

Taylor HouThey do that for like 18 hours a day.

Jonas BordoOkay. So that we can teach the AI what that motion looks like so that can get translated for a robot to be able to do that. Am I understanding that?

Taylor HouThat's correct. Yes. That's fascinating. Because effectively, what AI is today is pattern recognition. It's like, yeah, how would you train a human to move a ketchup bottle from a cart, like a basket in a cart, to a table? Humans are a lot faster. You show them once and they can kind of be like, oh, I got it. Let me, let me pick up the ketchup bottle and let me put it on it on the spot on the table. I would argue doing something like that now is table sticks.

Jonas BordoI always heard that folding laundry was like the ultimate challenge in robotics. Is that true or am I misunderstanding that?

Taylor HouI would argue folding laundry is a very difficult task because every article of clothing is different. Even the same article of clothing, when you like pick it up and put it on a table to fold it, it will lay on the table differently every single time. Yeah. But honestly, even folding clothes now in a controlled environment is a solved, it's done. That is not a problem whatsoever anymore.

Jonas BordoThat's very cool. I didn't know that. That's awesome.

Taylor HouYeah. But let me clarify. Don't misinterpret what I said of like we've seen it in a laboratory to being able to do that in everybody's home. Okay, because let me clarify, right?

Jonas BordoI really don't like folding laundry, Taylor. So, like, if we can get this in my house right now, I'd be thrilled. That would be amazing. But you're saying not yet.

Taylor HouWell, just think of it like this is the example. Okay. For it to be safe enough in some a consumer's home, realistically, right now, it has to have a wheel base. Because without the wheel base, anybody who's deployed robotics, I'll just tell you right now, the very first, well, maybe not the very first question, but the question you should be asking is what happens if the robot falls over? Can you see my video right now? I can, yeah. This is one where this is like probably one of the most advanced humanoids right now on the market. I don't know if you can see this, but these hands are like 20, whatever, one or twenty-three degrees of freedom and movements. This humanoid weighs 300 pounds.

Jonas BordoOh wow. Okay. It does not look like 300 pounds.

Taylor HouWe keep them suspended with a gantry. If these things were to fall over, you do not want that thing falling over onto anyone, that's for sure. I would not trust one of these things around my kids. Like, no way. Let alone like grandma who needs the help at home to fold her clothes and do laundry and take out the trash and things like that. Realistically, what are the form factors you actually end up seeing? You see form factors like this. These are more your service.

Jonas BordoAnd that, like, I've seen something similar to that in a like a restaurant. Yeah, I've seen something similar to that, like delivering room service in a hotel. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Taylor HouRight. Because those are proven form factors where you have to kind of be purposefully doing it where like you like actually try to kick it over. Worst case it runs out of battery, it's not falling over. Right. Right. Like it's just gonna just stop moving. It won't hurt anyone. There's still a ways to go before we can go from folding laundry in a lab to folding laundry in a home.

Jonas BordoYeah, yeah. That's a big difference. The unpredictability of the home environment, etc.

Taylor HouThis one, by the way, I don't know if you can see this.

Jonas BordoThat's very cool. Tell me about that. What's that?

Taylor HouThis one is an industrial one, right? So it's designed specifically, like they're using this already. They have thousands of these deployed and they're using these on production facility lines. But this thing is immobile. This thing weighs like a thousand pounds. So it's not going from your laundry room to your kitchen. This is like stuck in your laundry room forever. And unless you want to spend, I don't know, a hundred thousand, two hundred thousand US dollars for a purpose build stuck in my laundry room, folding laundry. Yeah, you may hate doing laundry. I don't know if you hate doing laundry that much.

Jonas BordoNo, I do not hate doing laundry that much. But I can see a commercial laundry application potentially.

Taylor HouYeah, commercial, absolutely. And that's ultimately where we're applying this tech. We're applying tech or robotics in commercial applications like multifamily apartment buildings, where ultimately it's like labor shortages or a lack of labor, right, or consistent labor, where 100,000 realistically on a robot that's been proven to not fail for like or have at least a three-year lifespan, right, that can work 24-7, that's I think there's gonna be questions around like, well, what about our jobs and things like that, like humans' jobs and stuff? But outside of that, if you simply look at the fact that we have way more work available or jobs available than humans are willing to do, we can at least start with those jobs.

Jonas BordoI always come back every time somebody talks about worrying about job loss, I always come back to has everybody ever had enough resources? Yeah. I don't think any of us have ever had enough ability to do things. So if we can get more ability to do things, we're just gonna do more. And I think that's pretty exciting. So dispose that wide open. So tell me about applications in multifamily. How does this come to life in multifamily?

Taylor HouSo the very first one that we're actually working on, I don't think I can name their name quite yet, but they are one of the largest operators of apartment complexes or managers of apartment complexes in America. And they're starting with quadrupeds as a patrol use case, right? Security patrol, deterrents. If they have a parking garage or parking lot on site, they can go around and look for unwanted or guests, the cars that have been sitting there for too long. It's like, whose car is this? And things like that. Like it's, I don't want to call it security theater. Like it's definitely more than theater, but in a sense, it's like just having a physical presence that people are reminded of makes them think a little bit differently around maybe I shouldn't do that thing that I was thinking about doing. versus like, yeah, we've got cameras everywhere.

Jonas BordoPresumably it's got video capture, right?

Taylor HouYeah, they have cameras, they have speakers, microphones, GPS. I mean, they are literally moving iPads that are like very capable, go up and down stairs. I'll try to get one of my team members to like walk them up and down these stairs in the background here. These form factors are here, they're now. And what you see in my background, technically, I would say like a lot of these aren't available in America right now. But then what I've seen in the RD factories here, right, or manufacturing facilities, is the next iteration. And I'll actually share a video with you separately. I'll show you what's the future already that you can see in China that's realistically in America we probably aren't going to see for like five years, if not 10 years, right? And I think in America, especially right now with the political atmosphere around Chinese robotics, this is not something that most of our industry would care about or know about. But like literally, the FCC has banned all future certifications of robots in America, unless the FCC essentially gives them conditional approval, like so some special status thing, or if it's made in America. I had no idea. That's wild. Yeah, the only ones that get to come in right now are the ones who are that already have FCC approval. And so just like an iPhone, it's gonna age out. America is essentially gonna be stuck on robotics hardware. It'll take about a year, so call it 12 months from now. But once that 12 months expires, we're not gonna get new tech, especially robotics. I think that's a really big problem, right? That's like a very bad thing for American industry in general. But that's also why like I'm here, right? Like I'm here because one of the deals I'm working on is we're working with the manufacturers to license us the designs to then do the manufacturing 100% in America. There's tons of opportunity. Everybody wants the American market because American labor is very expensive and the American market in general is massive. And so everyone still wants the American market. It just seems like the American market doesn't want anybody else. And so hopefully we can figure out a happy medium where America is not behind on this kind of stuff and is actually on the cutting edge like we are in AI, but it also takes deployments too, right? So you can go back to the multi-funding deployments. Robotics right now is in this weird stage where in RD and labs, anything's possible at this point. But actually deploying it in real life, making real money or like doing real jobs is a massive gap. It's a huge gap. Because, I mean, Jonas operators. If you were to walk into an operator and it's like unproven tech, and you say, I need you to fork over a commit, not even commit, like fork over a quarter million dollars up front to try this, right?

Jonas BordoNobody's gonna do that. That's a tough, especially something where you don't know how the residents are gonna react to it. You don't know if it's gonna work.

Taylor HouSo right now, the model, the business model is more robots as a service. So we start deployments with like free pilots, so a month free, try before you buy or even commit. And then even if you like in that trial, it's like, okay, this works. Our residents love it. This is amazing. Then we also aren't asking you to fork over a quarter million dollars. We're saying, look, let's just start at $4,000 a month. Cheaper than a human, better than a human because it works 24-7 and it's connected. It's can it can communicate with everything you already have. Your cameras, right? Your existing setup, it can send notifications just like your ring doorbell can. All of those things it can now do, and it's $4,000 a month. Oh, and by the way, the servicing is all done by us as well. So we take care of the warranties, repairs, which is pretty attractive. Yeah. Yeah, like everything so that ultimately the apartment operator or any operator is essentially paying for the outcome. You're not paying for a problem, right? Or you're not, you're not buying more problems, you're just paying for the outcome.

Jonas BordoWhich I think that's important because always the challenge with advanced tech is that they don't necessarily have the staff to be able to take care of that and to sustain it over time, nor should they. So having a vendor, having a partner who can maintain it for them is critical. So I love the security application of it, Taylor. That makes a lot of sense to me. How else are we going to see these come to life? Like, what are some of the other near-term applications in multifamily?

Taylor HouYeah, I mean, in multifamily, the ones that are already happening in hotels, like all over the world, and in some hotels in America is your delivery robots, your service robots, like they some of them have doors that open, others are just kind of open, right? You may see them in Chinese restaurants, right? Things like that, picking up, dishes and things like airports. Those are solved at this point. They're safe, they're reliable, they self-charge. Instead of having a human literally, deliver a toothbrush when someone requests it at, in room 302 or whatever it is, your front desk staff or your concierge literally like gets the call, right, or gets the request, pulls out of the drawer, puts it into the robot, types the number, and it just goes and takes, you know, it hit handles it. And at least someone's in China, they're connected to the elevators, they're connected to telephony. And so when they show up to your door, they will actually call you or send you a text and say, hey, I'm outside your door, come get your toothbrush, right? Instead of like ringing your doorbell, which is sometimes disruptive with family with kids, babies, things like that. Like, yeah, like it, it's those are solved. So if you think in multifamily, one of the original ideas I had was, I wonder if I can use humanoids to deliver Amazon or UPR packages from the mailroom to the door, like to your actual unit. And I would argue that's still a ways away, but leveraging existing on-site staff to effectively be able to just things come, whether it's Uber, Uber DoorDash deliveries or packages, they come and you just type in the unit number and put it in a in a box and it just goes off and goes and delivers it. That 1000% is solved. And I truly believe multifamily operators and commercial buildings and hotels, you can upcharge for that. You can charge a dollar a package, you can charge $30 extra a month for the convenience of Jonas not having to go downstairs and rummage through hundreds of other packages to find his.

Jonas BordoLots of people would pay for that for sure.

Taylor HouYeah, tons of people would pay for that. I think that's a reality already today. And then beyond that, then I also think you've got like what you know, you have here, which are going to be your like cleaning robots. So again, these are all like services, but like your cleaning robots where like if you go to a hotel or a multifamily building, right, your class C's, your class Bs, even, it's probably rare that you see cleaners cleaning the floors all the time. Maybe in your class A, triple A, your ultralux, yeah, they're cleaning those things all the time. But it's primarily because labor's expensive and the equipment is hard to move around and things like that. And so now, like if you're talking like $10,000 for a cleaning robot that can go to multiple floors too, because it has access to your elevator, why not? And what's interesting about how they're being used in China is they're dual purpose or multi-purpose. Now it's not just doing cleaning, but it's also like essentially eyes on every hallway, every door, every place, nook and cranny of the building that humans aren't likely going to. And so that becomes pretty interesting where like, you know, if you have if you manage a condo and you have an association and you have rules around leaving trash out in front of your door, well, it's kind of hard to prove that someone has left their trash out for a day or two or 24 hours. But if you have cleaning robots that are actually cleaning on a patrol every single time they've seen that trash. It hasn't moved. It's been there.

Jonas BordoAnd it's time stamped and it's evidenced and it's all of that, right?

Taylor HouIt's time stamped, it's evidenced. And now what you do with that is a whole nother thing, right? But the point is, is the cleaning robot doesn't have to only be cleaning. You can actually now use it for many other things beyond just cleaning. But of course, its primary purpose is cleaning. But a lot of people who live in big buildings, honestly, they just want, if they see like something associated with the building, they feel like their fees that they're paying whatever is actually working for them, right? Versus a lot of people in general just sign unseen, right? It's like if I can't see it, it must not be working. It must not be adding value to me. And so I think that kind of like presence is pretty interesting because people attribute value to that presence. It was actually pretty interesting. We were we were talking to a police department, I can name their name. it's Fulsher, kind of west of Houston. They're one of the top, like, I think five fastest growing cities in America right now. And I don't know the name of this company, but they have this really fun, cool piece of tech where in like the command center of Fulsher. You can quite literally see all the patrol cars on a map at any given time. But the view that you actually see and they see in their cars as well is it's like a Pac-Man game where literally the feedback from the city, like literally the residents, right? They're like, we pay a lot of taxes and we know it's going to the police department, but we don't see the cops. We don't see the police. We don't see these patrol cars anywhere. And so the city was like, interesting. So people attribute, are we doing our jobs to whether we're visible or not? Not the fact that we're actually doing something. They just want to be able to see us. And because they'll literally get calls from like some, retired person in a cul-de-sac, and she'd be like, I never see you guys. So it was a very easy solution. All the cars have GPS in them. They all have cellular. And so they do, I don't know which vendor this is, but someone designed a little Pac-Man game where the dots actually get bigger and bigger and bigger the longer time has elapsed since a patrol car has been seen on that dot. And so the cops literally they play Pac-Man in real life. They drive around, going around eating these dots.

Jonas BordoYou know, it's a great way to keep track of like where have you been? Where are we actively patrolling? Because we all fall into habits. We're all creatures of habit, right? And I'm sure the police are no different. So, they're going to the hotspot that they know about, or they're, driving the regular route that they do, and they don't go down that cul de sac. So that woman has maybe never seen a police officer on her street. And maybe that's a good thing, but nobody's needed to see a police officer there. But at the same time, yeah, it's nice to see your tax dollars at work. So I understand that.

Taylor HouYeah. And so that's stuff that's quite interesting. Now, for them as a great example. They actually have, well, this is very controversial right now, but they have the flock sky, like the drone system. I forgot what it's called, but essentially they not only do they have flock cameras, but they also have the drone system where within 22 seconds of getting a notification, it can get eyes in the sky on anything anywhere in the jurisdiction of that city. Okay. And for the police officers, right, or law enforcement, that is very, very, very helpful for them as a tool. I understand that. But what was also pretty interesting and why like our quadrupeds were very interesting to them was they told us they have 51 miles of trails, like sidewalks and trails in that community. Right. And I was like, all right, well, that's cool. Why, like, why don't you just use the drones? Like if something happens, why don't you just use the drones? And they're like, well, the thing is, is drones are great, but drones can't see through trees. And so having quadrupeds that are essentially playing the Pac-Man game, patrolling on the trails, right? Whether it's night, whether it's day, it doesn't matter, that becomes an actual like, you know, it's similar to the, cop cars driving on the roads. The city, the residents want, they're requesting for like use our tax dollars, make it known that you care, right? We can see you. Yeah. So I think just in general, those things are quite interesting. And again, I haven't even gotten into like what happens in an actual emergency situation, but just the theater alone, the semblance of security safety, like the safety aspect goes up exponentially. Don't quote me on what number exponentially, but just the feeling of it's much safer truly is there.

Jonas BordoYeah. And I remember I lived in Chicago years ago, and there was this thing called the blue light program where all of the crime hotspots in the city, they'd put a blue light on the corner, and the blue light had a 24-hour video surveillance going on. And it just completely shifted everything away from there. Nobody got in any trouble around those because they knew they were going to get caught. It was on video. And I think, in these tools, you have a roving always-on video, audio capture, and there's always awareness that somebody's watching. And so I do feel like that would make people safer. And yeah, part of it's theater, but I think there's very much reality behind that as well.

Taylor HouYeah. Not to make this current eventy, but right now America is absolutely on two ends of the spectrum. We don't know what to choose, whether it's privacy or safety. And those two unfortunately are on the opposite ends of the like the one spectrum. Like the one seesaw is safety or privacy. We're literally trying to figure this out as a country right now.

Jonas BordoYeah. And you see that debate constantly. And I think we're all divided within ourselves. I kind of can't believe at some points the amount of my privacy that I've given away, not even for safety, but for convenience.

Taylor HouYeah, for convenience.

Jonas BordoTo save a buck to for a host of different reasons. But that's the choices that are put in front of us, and we're all making different choices right now. And sometimes you're aware, sometimes you aren't. It's an interesting time on that front for sure. So, Taylor, this has been fascinating. Thank you so much for showing us all of this. any last thoughts before we wrap up? Anything that you'd like folks to know about where this is all going?

Taylor HouI think in general, I wouldn't necessarily say this is like AI right now for America, but I will absolutely say Americans tend to we absolutely have the right to do this, obviously, but it's like a whole data center debate, the flop debates. This is something where if we truly want to stay ahead, we've gotta be willing to embrace this stuff. And if we don't, we're absolutely I mean, look, we're already behind. Okay. Realistically, we're ready behind, but we have a chance to catch up. And I, at least for the robotics industry in general, anybody, whether you're an apartment operator, a manufacturing plant, a facilities operator, whatever it may be, a parking garage attendant, I know it can feel scary sometimes with anything new, but we're quite literally at this crossroads in the world where it's like if America does not get on this train, like the train will leave us at the station. And it's not like the train's coming back. Like there is only one train, right? Because there is nowhere else in the world where advanced robotics like this is being manufactured outside of China. Yeah. Yeah. For any politician that may see this, like, please, the theater around Chinese robots are scary and they're gonna like slurp all our data and capture our faces and stuff. We're all carrying around iPhones with cameras, and this is the tracking device already, and it's made in China, and yet you allow it in everybody's pockets. I understand American brains, right? But Chinese hardware is not something to be scared of. It is something we should absolutely leverage and learn from. And blocking that today is only going to essentially keep us in the stone ages.

Jonas BordoI couldn't agree more. Turning away new technology is never a good plan, and particularly in something like this. Like just the level of competitiveness that comes from the cost advantages, the productivity advantages, the degree to which that's going to drop to the bottom line for all of us as American consumers if we allow it in. I think it's such a missed opportunity to fall behind on that. And it's such a shame not to be able to learn from those who are ahead of us on it. So I think the sooner the better. I'd love to see more of it around us.

Taylor HouAnd look, if you're if you're an operator of any building, right if you're interested at all or willing to try these things, you don't reach out to me. Reach out to any umpteenth robotics company out there and just start having conversations with them. They're not going to say no. The one thing this industry needs is real deployments. They need real problems to solve. And if you have real problems that you think based on what you've kind of seen today or what you may think of could be solved with robots, reach out to any of us. All of that helps us as an industry. And then ultimately, we'll get to your bottom line. Right? Like it'll accrete to your bottom line. And if that happens, it's a win-win for everybody.

Jonas BordoWell, Taylor, again, thank you. How can folks find you?

Taylor HouTaylor H O U anywhere on all platforms, or just Taylor at anywhitecompanies.com. But specifically for humanoids, it's H O U, M A N O I D S dot com. Yeah.

Jonas BordoAll right. Well, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Taylor.

Taylor HouThanks, Jonas. Thanks for having me.

Jonas BordoAppreciate it. That's Net Effective, new episodes weekly. If you're running rentals and figuring out AI, hit like, subscribe, follow, or whatever your app makes you do to get more of the show. And if you'd like to come on as a guest or subscribe to the weekly updates, go to neteffective.show. I'm Jonas Bordo. Thanks for listening.