By Dan Smigrod, Managing Editor, Humanoid Home News
Source: Apple’s HALO research paper
Project: HALO demonstrations and research overview
Research preprint date: November 4, 2026.
A doorway left partly open changes the route through a room. So does a table in the way. For a humanoid to become useful at home, it needs to respond to those surroundings, even when it has never been there before.
Apple researchers tackle that problem in HALO, a research system that uses simulated environments to develop movements for a modified Unitree G1 humanoid. Their work examines how those skills transfer to unfamiliar physical spaces.
Learning to move around furniture
The project combines camera input with instructions to plan the robot’s movements. Its reported demonstrations include:
- Walking toward a named object.
- Sitting on a seat.
- Moving sideways through a partly open doorway.
- Crouching or crawling beneath furniture.
- Pushing a box.
These are practical movement problems for a robot sharing a furnished space with people. Passing through an existing gap, for example, is a different task from opening the door.
What the success rates mean
The authors report:
- 91% success across 360 individual-skill trials in six physical environments.
- 70% average success across three multi-step task sequences tested in one physical environment.
- 50% success for a three-step sequence ending in a box push.
The results come from the researchers’ own evaluation. They do not predict how reliably a robot would complete a full chore in someone’s home.
New skills still require human task design. The authors also describe failures when the next target leaves the camera’s view.
Research with household questions still open
Public research code is available. However, the system documentation says trained model weights and some task data are not included.
The reviewed material does not establish:
- Dependable completion of everyday household chores.
- Safety for unattended operation around residents.
- A consumer release of HALO.
This is an Apple research project using Unitree hardware. The paper does not announce an Apple humanoid for sale.
The takeaway for Humanoid Home News readers: handling an unfamiliar room is a useful step toward household assistance. HALO offers a research example of that progress. Dependable help with everyday chores remains a separate test.
