Watch: New humanoid robot unloads laundry and folds towels without human help

California-based robotics firm DYNA Robotics launched DYNA 2.1, a physical agent designed to do tasks like laundry and folding clothes. The company announced the launch on September 29 and shared a video showing the humanoid in action.

DYNA 2.1 completes these tasks without any human intervention, using its physical dexterity and complex reasoning skills. The firm is currently deploying the robot in hotels, laundromats, and restaurants.

Its laundry demonstration moves beyond folding individual towels, showing how the machine handles a workflow that includes operating appliances, moving laundry, organizing finished stacks, and recovering from mistakes.

From washing machines to folded towels

We are releasing Dyna-2.1, the first Physical Agent that achieves reliable super long-horizon whole-body autonomy. It combines our brand-new semi-humanoid hardware with an agentic system built around Dyna-2 to handle ultra-long real-world workflows.

Here is an uncut footage of… pic.twitter.com/kDt8UtS7EQ

— Dyna Robotics (@DynaRobotics) September 29, 2026

In a commercial laundry setting, DYNA 2.1 loads washers and dryers and actively turns the machines on. It can then bend down and reach into the back of a dryer to transfer bulk towels into a basket.

Once the towels are removed, the robot snaps them flat, folds them, and sorts them into stacks according to size. It also places the finished stacks on shelves, crouching for lower storage spaces or reaching upward for higher ones.

The system is designed to respond to physical errors without asking a person to intervene. If a towel falls onto the floor, it can pick it up; if a grasp fails, it can abandon that attempt and try again.

“Our goal is to make general purpose robots commercially viable for real-world scenarios. Our customers need robots that complete an entire workflow for a full shift – without human babysitters – not just specific tasks,” said Lindon Gao, co-founder and CEO of Dyna Robotics.

Two arms and four steerable wheels

The robot’s hardware combines an upper torso and two arms with a base supported by four steerable wheels. Its arms accommodate either parallel-jaw grippers or dexterous hands for reaching and manipulating objects.

The wheeled design provides mobility while avoiding the balancing demands associated with walking robots. Its upper body supplies the movement needed for tasks such as bending, lifting, and accessing shelves at different heights.

A vision-language orchestrator reasons through complex workflows, while a whole-body controller coordinates driving and upper-body movements into integrated actions.

Underlying these systems is DYNA 2, the company’s proprietary world action model. DYNA says it trained the model on one million hours of human and robot data to support physical skills and steerability.

Measuring work between human interventions

DYNA evaluates the robot using Mean Time Between Interventions, or MTBI, which measures how long it operates before someone must step in.

The approach focuses on sustained performance across connected tasks rather than success on an isolated demonstration. A laundry shift requires the robot to maintain progress through repeated actions, changing object positions, and occasional handling errors.

During operation, the physical agent captures execution data, including the reasoning system’s decision traces and the controller’s joint loads.

That information feeds back into the system through a continuous improvement loop intended to increase the amount of work completed between interventions.

DYNA aims to extend the robot’s time between human interventions by feeding operational data back into the system.

Source: https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/watch-new-humanoid-robot-unloads-laundry-and-folds-towels-without-human-help