# What can robots actually do today?

**Robots verifiably do narrow jobs today; general-purpose home help is still a demo.** Robots verifiably do specific, narrow jobs today: driving robotaxis, delivering on sidewalks, moving goods in warehouses, assisting surgeons, and vacuuming homes. DEPLOY reads each from reviewed registry records. What is still only claimed is the general-purpose robot: a humanoid that does your housework, or a car you own driving itself unsupervised. Those are maker demos, attributed to their makers, not verified deployed capabilities.

Last verified Jul 26, 2026. 9 sources.

## Short answer

The honest answer splits in two. There is a real, growing list of specific jobs that robots verifiably do today, and a separate list of things that look impressive in a demo video but are not yet a capability you can rely on.

On the verified side, read live from DEPLOY's reviewed records: robotaxis carry paying passengers with no one in the driver seat in mapped cities, sidewalk and road robots deliver food and parcels, mobile robots move and pick goods across warehouses, surgical robots assist surgeons through operations under the surgeon's control, and robot vacuums clean floors in homes. Each of these is a narrow job, done in a controlled or well-mapped setting, and each is backed by dated, sourced records on the registry.

On the claimed side is the thing most people picture when they hear the word robot: a general-purpose machine that just handles life. Figure, 1X, and others show humanoids folding laundry and loading dishwashers, and 1X sells a home humanoid, but the demonstrated home tasks have been run with a remote human operator, so this is demonstrated and claimed rather than deployed. And while robotaxis run driverless as a fleet, a car you own still ships with driver assistance: Tesla itself brands its system Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and says it needs a fully attentive driver.

So what can robots actually do today? A lot, in narrow lanes, verifiably. Just not yet the general-purpose helper the demos promise. Everything here is dated and attributed, so you can judge each claim yourself.

## What robots verifiably do today

Read live from DEPLOY's reviewed registry: the deployments and models it actually holds for each capability, with a real example record. These are narrow, specific jobs, done in controlled or well-mapped settings.

| What robots verifiably do today | Status | As of | Detail | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Carry paying passengers with no one in the driver seat | On the record | Jul 26, 2026 | DEPLOY holds 95 reviewed deployments across 41 reviewed robotaxi models, for example Apollo RT6 by Baidu. Each is a dated, sourced record. | [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/apollo-rt6) (2026-07-26) |
| Deliver food and parcels on sidewalks and city streets | On the record | Jul 26, 2026 | DEPLOY holds 53 reviewed deployments across 20 reviewed delivery robot models, for example Amazon Scout by Amazon. Each is a dated, sourced record. | [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/amazon-scout) (2026-07-26) |
| Move, sort, and pick goods across warehouses and logistics sites | On the record | Jul 26, 2026 | DEPLOY holds 50 reviewed deployments across 77 reviewed warehouse mobile robot models, for example Amazon Robotics fleet by Amazon. Each is a dated, sourced record. | [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/amazon-robotics-fleet) (2026-07-26) |
| Assist a surgeon through an operation, under the surgeon's control | On the record | Jul 26, 2026 | DEPLOY holds 39 reviewed deployments across 44 reviewed surgical robot models, for example CORI by Smith+Nephew. Each is a dated, sourced record. | [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/smith-nephew-cori) (2026-07-26) |
| Vacuum and mop floors in homes on their own | On the record | Jul 26, 2026 | DEPLOY holds 1 reviewed deployment across 67 reviewed robot vacuum models, for example D8 by Neato Robotics. Each is a dated, sourced record. | [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/neato-d8) (2026-07-26) |

## What is still only claimed

The general-purpose robot most people picture is not here yet. Each row is a maker's demonstration or product claim, attributed to the maker and dated to its source. None is a DEPLOY-verified capability.

| What is still claimed | Status | Who (attributed) | As of | Source |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Be a general-purpose helper around the house. Figure, 1X, and others show humanoids folding laundry, loading dishwashers, and tidying in demo videos, and 1X sells NEO for the home. Figure calls its Helix laundry folding the first fully autonomous instance. Independent reporting found NEO's demonstrated home tasks were run with a remote human operator in a VR headset, so general-purpose home help is demonstrated and claimed, not a verified deployed capability. | Demonstrated, not deployed | Figure and 1X (maker demos and product pages), Fortune | Feb 26, 2026 (as reported) | [Figure AI](https://www.figure.ai/news/helix-learns-to-fold-laundry), [1X Technologies](https://www.1x.tech/discover/neo-home-robot) (2025-10-28), [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/02/26/humanoid-robot-that-will-do-chores-for-you-robotics-company-1x/) (2026-02-26) |
| Drive a car you own with no one watching the road. The driverless service that verifiably runs today is the robotaxi, operated as a mapped fleet (the verified row above). In a privately owned car the shipping product is driver assistance: Tesla brands its system Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and states it requires a fully attentive driver and does not make the vehicle autonomous. Unsupervised self-driving in a car you own is not a verified deployed capability. | Supervised, not autonomous | Tesla (Full Self-Driving Supervised), reported by InsideEVs | Dec 5, 2025 (as reported) | [InsideEVs](https://insideevs.com/news/780908/tesla-fsd-texting-driving-cm/) (2025-12-05) |

## How we know this

- [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/apollo-rt6) (2026-07-26)
- [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/amazon-scout) (2026-07-26)
- [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/amazon-robotics-fleet) (2026-07-26)
- [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/smith-nephew-cori) (2026-07-26)
- [DEPLOY registry](https://registry.deploy.report/models/neato-d8) (2026-07-26)
- [Figure AI](https://www.figure.ai/news/helix-learns-to-fold-laundry)
- [1X Technologies](https://www.1x.tech/discover/neo-home-robot) (2025-10-28)
- [Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/02/26/humanoid-robot-that-will-do-chores-for-you-robotics-company-1x/) (2026-02-26)
- [InsideEVs](https://insideevs.com/news/780908/tesla-fsd-texting-driving-cm/) (2025-12-05)

## Common questions

### What jobs can robots do today?

Robots verifiably do narrow, specific jobs today. On DEPLOY's reviewed record that includes driving robotaxis, delivering on sidewalks and roads, moving and picking goods in warehouses, assisting surgeons in the operating room, and vacuuming floors in homes. Each is a real capability backed by dated, sourced records, not a demo. The general-purpose robot that does everything is not among them yet.

### Can robots do household chores yet?

Not as a verified, autonomous capability. Companies including Figure and 1X show humanoids folding laundry, loading dishwashers, and tidying, and 1X sells NEO for the home. But independent reporting found NEO's demonstrated home tasks were run with a remote human operator in a VR headset, so household help by a general-purpose humanoid is demonstrated and claimed, not deployed. Robot vacuums, a narrow chore, are the exception that genuinely works.

### Can a robot drive a car by itself?

As a robotaxi, yes: fleets carry paying passengers with no one in the driver seat in mapped cities, and DEPLOY holds those as verified deployment records. In a car you own, no: the shipping product is driver assistance. Tesla brands its system Full Self-Driving (Supervised) and states it requires a fully attentive driver and does not make the vehicle autonomous. The driverless capability is real for fleets, claimed for private cars.

### What can robots NOT do yet?

The honest gaps are the general-purpose ones. No robot on DEPLOY's record verifiably runs a household on its own, cooks a meal from scratch in a home, or drives a privately owned car with no one watching the road. Those are demonstrated in staged videos and attributed to their makers, but they are not deployed capabilities. The verified capabilities are narrow and specific, done in controlled or well-mapped settings.

### Are humanoid robots useful yet?

In pilots, increasingly, but mostly in narrow industrial tasks rather than general home help. Humanoids from Figure, 1X, and others are in factory and logistics pilots, and DEPLOY tracks those as records. The demos of humanoids doing housework are real videos, but the home tasks have relied on remote human operators, so a humanoid that independently runs your home is claimed, not verified. A robot's usefulness is measured by the work it verifiably does.

## Keep reading

- [Can a robot feel pain?](/can-a-robot-feel-pain.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [Which robots can do a backflip?](/which-robots-can-do-a-backflip.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [Can humanoid robots cook?](/can-humanoid-robots-cook.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [Can humanoid robots do laundry?](/can-humanoid-robots-do-laundry.md): Capabilities & sentience
- [All verified answers](/answers.md): Every standing question DEPLOY tracks.

_Canonical URL: /what-can-robots-actually-do-today. HTML version: [link](/what-can-robots-actually-do-today)._