At LG's booth at CES 2026, the most crowded corner was a display area simulating a living room and kitchen. Everyone held their breath, watching a robot—a humanoid robot created by LG to realize its vision of a "Zero Labor Home."LG CLOID.
In the past few years, we have seen too many robots that are labeled as "family robots" but are significantly different from what we imagined. However, the interactive operation demonstrated by LG's CLOiD may be a reflection of the daily life of families in the future.
It's not just about movement; the key is "those hands."
When you actually see the LG CLOiD, the first thing you'll notice is its design that resembles a human upper body. It even simulates human breathing movements when in standby mode, and its hands make subtle movements when they hang naturally, thereby reducing the cold and frightening feeling that robots can evoke.
Unlike robots like the Tesla Optimus that insist on bipedal walking, CLOiD maintains a more stable wheeled base, but can also adjust its height as needed, and can perform fine manipulations with its hands and fingers.
During the live demonstration, after receiving vague instructions such as "prepare breakfast for me," CLOiD automatically determines what to do and can even further deduce how to help family members. For example, if it finds that Dad has left his keys on the sofa, CLOiD will pick them up and place them in a prominent position on the table. In addition, it can provide necessary assistance according to the different needs and schedules of family members.
CLOiD boasts a 7-DOF robotic arm, its movements far smoother than expected, lacking the abrupt jerks of traditional industrial machines. Each hand has five independently actuated fingers. In a live demonstration, it successfully identified and grasped a refrigerator handle, opened the door, and accurately removed a bottle of milk. This seemingly simple action is extremely challenging for a robot, requiring it to control the force to avoid crushing the cardboard box while simultaneously adjusting its posture to avoid obstacles.
In the home environment, CLOiD can connect with ThinQ smart home appliances. For example, when preparing breakfast for the family, it can not only remember the dietary preferences of each family member, but also preheat the oven to bake croissants later. It can also check whether the washing machine has finished washing clothes, whether the clothes need to be taken out of the washing machine and folded and stored. It can even proactively detect when the robot vacuum cleaner's cleaning path is blocked by the laundry basket and then help to move the laundry basket away.
On-site observations showed that although CLOiD's movements are still relatively slow compared to humans, it can still successfully complete related tasks through active learning and judgment.
Why not adopt a human-like bipedal design?
LG staff explained that the reason for adopting a wheeled base design is that there are many factors that change in the ground in a typical home environment, including wires, carpets, small objects, and even children or pets, which may affect the robot's movement. Therefore, they believe that using a wheeled base is more stable and makes it easier to move through autonomous driving technology, while also avoiding the problem of instability when walking on two legs.
However, wheeled bases still have their limitations. For example, they are obviously not suitable for living spaces where people have to go up and down stairs, and the space cannot be too narrow. But LG says that there is still room for improvement in the current design, and perhaps in the future, more stable and safer bipedal robots can be developed to meet the needs of more diverse application environments.
LG's Self-Developed Joint AXIUM: Its Hardware Strength
In addition to the robot itself, LG also showcased its capabilities with the new driver brand LG Actuator AXIUM.
This is similar to the "joints" of a robot. Leveraging decades of accumulated technology in washing machine and refrigerator motors, LG has created a high-torque, lightweight drive module. This is why CLOiD's arm can be so slender yet powerful. This shows that LG not only wants to make robots, but also wants to become an upstream supplier in the robot industry chain.
Can this robot truly realize a "zero-labor household"? Judging from its performance at CES 2026, LG has indeed shown us a glimpse of that future.
