Think about it: You’re making cookies for a holiday get-together, and things get busy in the kitchen. You open the oven door, put on the oven mitts and take out the hot metal tray of warm snickerdoodles. You turned to put it on the countertop and… well, you forgot to prepare something to put on the tray. As you weigh your options, you notice that some trivets are starting to move from their storage space on the counter. They move, on their own, in place.

It sounds like magic, like something from Beauty and the Beast, but it’s a possible vision of your future kitchen, according to researchers at Carnegie Mellon University. With the help of cameras, different AI models and a few small wheels, ordinary objects can find their way to the exact place you want, without you having to look for it.

It’s easy to imagine a robot housekeeper, like Rosie from The Jetsons, but that’s not the only way robotics and artificial intelligence in theory it could make life easier for you at home or in the office. The same technology can be applied on a much smaller scale to items you interact with regularly — your coffee mug, your stapler, your kitchen utensils and more.

“Instead of bringing more robots into our existing environments, what if things already in our homes that we already know become intelligent and robotic?” Violet Han, a Ph.D. student at CMU and lead author of a ROLE in research, said in an interview.

Read more: I Saw It With My Own Eyes: Robots Are Here and Walk Among Us

Big, powerful humanoid robots give us a lot to worry about: It is heavy and strong, which can cause damage if it does not work. They approach that uncanny valley of creepiness when something looks human. And it is very difficult to do a reliable job. Human ingenuity is a remarkable evolutionary achievement, and we built our world with the assumption that those who act on it can do things like hold a doorknob. That is a difficult skill to impart to a robot. If those robots become commonplace, it won’t be the only thing that gets automated.

“I have a hard time imagining that you have these robot butlers, but at the same time, everything remains static as before,” said Alexandra Ion, an assistant professor at CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute, who leads the Interactive Structures Lab.

Adding AI and mobility to the things we use can solve many problems. This allows the automation to feel more natural — you’re still using the same type of stapler, even though it has fewer wheels and seems to have a mind of its own. But there are new problems, like privacy and security, that need to be solved before your coffee mug starts chasing you every time you yawn.

Things that move

If you have smart trivets that are known to move on you when you’re holding a hot tray of cookies, you need trivets that move. For these experiments, the researchers built wheeled platforms – a circle for a mug, with a pair of wheels and motors and batteries, for example. Each is powered by a Bluetooth-enabled microcontroller. A future consumer version of these things may be custom-built to be more streamlined, Han and Ion say, but this is to prove that the technology is capable.

The objects themselves are not equipped with artificial intelligence. While AI models can run on small pieces of hardware, such as telephones and watchesit’s actually an AI system that controls the entire kitchen.

It is equipped with a camera that streams image frames to AI models that can process and recognize what is happening in an hour. They can find out what a person is doing and see things that might be involved in that activity. Large language models with reasoning skills predict what is likely to happen next. The knowledge base encoded in the system ensures that it knows some basic things about how people interact with things.

“If a mug moves towards me, it’s more convenient for me if the handle is towards me,” for example, Han said.

While the idea of ​​things coming to your rescue in a crisis is amazing (even if the crisis itself is minor), the system can help in other ways. The key tray can shake your keys when you leave the house without it. If you’re looking for a stapler but it’s hidden behind something on your desk, the AI ​​can move it where you can see it. You can use voice activation to ask your smart home to bring you the stapler.

When can you expect it in your home? The technology itself is “not that far off,” Ion said, but whether people will actually want the equipment that makes it possible is another matter. “If you’re OK with overhead cameras, that’s faster to deploy,” he said, “but personally, I’m not OK with that.”

A solution to privacy is less technical than political. Better regulations and policies will give consumers the comfort that their privacy will be protected, Ion said. Having models that work entirely on local hardware, computers that are not connected to the internet, also helps.

Check it out: How Humanoid Robots Will Gain Confidence in 2026 | What the Future Holds

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What kind of robots do you like?

With humanoid robotsIon said there is a utopian vision of android butlers and a “dystopian version where your robot butler can become evil for some reason.”

For better or worse, the idea of ​​humanoid robots in your home is getting closer to reality. At CES 2026, we saw example after example of machines with two arms, two legs and a mission to handle household chores so you don’t have to. The results are mixed — some work well, and LG’s laundry-folding bot folded clothes, but perhaps not with the speed and efficiency you’d expect from the Jetsons’ Rosie.

Even if the robot is not humanoid, there are concerns. In this case, should you put AI-controlled wheels on a knife? The researchers have a working knife, but it is designed so that it works with the blade always facing a person.

“I think it’s an interesting tension and discussion to have,” Ion said. “Don’t we want to have these kinds of things in motion?”

The goal is to ensure that when robots do things in our homes, they act in a way that promotes safety and helps us do what we want to do.

“Robots are becoming more capable, for example, folding clothesbut… they have to fold the clothes the way we want,” said Han. “Each piece of clothing will be different. It is important for robots not only to be competent but also to understand what the user wants and how they can best help the user. “

A way to maybe look? Your coffee cup signals that you are ready for another sip and begins to find its way to you.