Aaron Tan and Angus Fung studied socially acceptable human-robot interaction as graduate students in Professor Goldie Nejat's Autonomous Systems and Biomechatronics Lab. Their first prototypes were humanoid robots deployed in homes and hotels, but customers found them clunky.
Watching Beauty and the Beast with his wife, Tan got the idea for robots disguised as furniture instead. The result, Lume, is a robotic floor lamp that folds laundry — activated by voice or smartphone app, and taught through imitation and reinforcement learning, with safety features including compliant motor controls, 360-degree awareness, fabric on its joints and mechanical sensor shutters.
Tan's concept video on X drew over four million views last July, and their startup Syncere, based in Palo Alto with a team of eight Canadians, closed a $3.5-million USD pre-seed round in under two weeks after launching in mid-2025. They plan a Toronto office within the year. As Tan says, "On our office whiteboard, we wrote, ‘a Lume in every room’ – that’s our goal."
Reported from ‘A Lume in every room’: U of T Engineering alumni are reimagining home robotics – starting with your laundry, by Amanda Hacio (U of T Alumni News, January 19, 2026).
More from the original reporting: alumni.utoronto.ca/news/a-lume-in-every-room-u-t-engineering-alumni-are-reimagining-home-robotics-starting-your-laundry