The startup Flourish is launching pre-orders for Flourish 1, a domestic robot designed and built in Paris. Priced at around 3,555 dollars (slightly over 3,000 euros), the robot will be available in fifty units starting in December. Flourish 1 is designed to learn household tasks such as tidying shoes, watering plants, or cleaning a cat’s litter after a half-hour demonstration controlled via a smartphone. Standing about 1.09 meters tall and weighing around twenty kilograms, the robot moves on a wheeled base and features a conical hat on top. Its two articulated arms end in pincers, and visible cables suggest it is still close to a prototype stage. Pre-orders begin on Tuesday, September 29, and the robot is expected to have twelve hours of autonomy. The key innovation lies in how it learns tasks. Through a dedicated app, users describe the steps of a task using a drag-and-drop interface and then guide the robot manually from their phone for half an hour, starting from different areas of the room. These videos are used to adapt the robot’s model to the user's specific needs, and after an hour, a notification confirms that the task has been learned. Antoine Marcel, the founder of Flourish, explains that the robot learns the task itself, not the location, meaning it can find shoes anywhere in the house. Once trained, Flourish 1 performs tasks on a fixed schedule, such as tidying shoes on Tuesday mornings or cleaning the cat’s litter every day at 11 o'clock, and can also be controlled by voice. The robot can also assist with more tasks, such as organizing toys, loading the dishwasher, cleaning tables, or retrieving objects. It can even provide weather updates, suggest outfits, wake users up, or remind them of tasks. The robot’s LiDAR sensor allows it to adjust to changes in the environment, such as when furniture is moved. Developers will have access to a Software Development Kit (SDK) and a store where they can publish additional tasks, which can be installed by other users in just five seconds. Flourish is clearly a Parisian project, with the robot designed and assembled in a workshop in Paris, using components mostly sourced from Asia. The founder, Antoine Marcel, has a background in AI and automation and previously founded Latice.ai, which focuses on fine-tuning vocal AI. The company’s pre-seed funding came from Families Fund, among others. Despite its capabilities, Flourish 1 has limitations. It is still relatively slow in its first version, with tasks like tidying shoes taking up to five minutes. It also cannot climb stairs. Antoine Marcel acknowledges these shortcomings, noting that an overly cluttered space might challenge even the robot. For safety, the robot’s wheeled base prevents it from losing balance, and it stops immediately if a person or animal enters its operational area. While it succeeds about 80% of the time on simple tasks, it still has room for improvement. The company aims for 99% success in the future but has not set a specific timeline.