Weave’s $8K Laundry Robot Still Needs Human Help

If you were hoping for a home robot that could finally handle laundry for you, Weave Robotics has an answer — sort of. 

The company’s new Isaac 0 folding robot is now shipping in the Bay Area, but it can’t do the job alone. 

The roughly $8K device folds common garments in 30 to 90 minutes and improves through weekly AI updates. When it gets stuck, remote human specialists step in to correct mistakes in real time. Isaac 0 offers a candid look at where home robotics will stand in 2026: useful, but still dependent on humans behind the scenes. 

Built to fold, backed by people

Weave announced Isaac 0 on Feb. 11 as the company’s first laundry robot.

“It’s already in our first customer’s homes less than a year and a half after Weave’s founding,” the company stated. 

“Laundry is a universal time sink that’s taken for granted to be human-only work simply because an alternative hasn’t existed,” Weave emphasized. The company described folding as a bounded task with measurable outcomes, making it an ideal testing ground for robotics in the home.

Isaac 0 is a stationary robot that plugs into a standard wall outlet. Users drop in a load of clothes and return to neatly folded stacks. The system handles T-shirts, long sleeves, sweaters, pants, towels, and similar garments. It doesn’t fold large blankets or bed sheets, according to TechBuzz. 

Weave acknowledged the robot’s limitations: “Because it’s an early, first-of-its-kind product, Isaac 0 won’t be perfect all the time,” the company explained. 

Weave added that when the robot encounters a difficult garment or makes a mistake it can’t fix, a Weave specialist can remotely substitute in for a 5- to 10-second correction and hand it back off to Isaac. 

The Register noted that teleoperators can access camera feeds from the robot’s head and wrists to guide those corrections, giving human operators visibility into the folding process. 

According to Weave’s official website, Isaac 0 carries a list price of $7,999 with a $250 refundable reservation deposit. This comes with a two-year warranty and secures priority delivery. There’s also a $450-per-month subscription plan for early adopters looking for a pay-as-you-go option.

A hybrid model for home robotics

That human-in-the-loop approach reflects a broader pattern for the robotics industry. Companies are increasingly combining automation with remote human oversight to bridge capability gaps as AI models mature. 

Folding laundry remains technically difficult as soft fabrics wrinkle, overlap, and crease easily. Computer vision systems struggle to identify garment edges in cluttered piles. By designing Isaac 0 as a stationary system, Weave narrowed the scope of the challenge but didn’t eliminate it. 

Weave said Isaac 0 began as an internal prototype of its broader mobile robot program. Earlier versions operated in commercial environments for months, folding thousands of pounds of laundry before expanding into homes. 

For now, Isaac 0 operates as a blend of automation and human oversight. The robot completes most folds independently, while remote specialists intervene briefly when needed. 

Whether consumers accept that balance remains unclear, as Isaac 0 isn’t a fully autonomous home robot but a connected system dependent on people to deliver consistent results. 

See how other robots are making waves, including Figure’s Helix 02 humanoid AI that coordinates a robot’s full-body movement.

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