Shen Yanan's Third Act: Build Homes Robot-Ready, Then Let Robots Move In

In 1962, the animated series The Jetsons aired, depicting flying cars, holograms, and a robot named Rosie. One overlooked detail: the house Rosie lived in, the hallways she walked, and the kitchen she used were designed from the start for a robot butler. In other words, nearly 60 years ago, people imagined homes and robots as a matched pair.

Today, when many discuss robots entering ordinary homes, they often overlook a key question: Is the home that the robot will enter ready? Existing residences have steps, thresholds, counter heights, and storage layouts built for human habits, making it hard for robots to work efficiently.

Shen Yanan's third venture targets this gap: first remodel the home environment so robots can do useful work, then let robots move in. This differs from the path of building robots and waiting for families to adapt. Instead, it treats the home as infrastructure for robot deployment, potentially lowering costs and accelerating the adoption of household robots. This approach could reduce deployment barriers and change how homes are designed in the robot era. It also shifts attention from robot capability alone to the environment robots must navigate.