A SF startup is secretly testing robots in Airbnbs, and trashing them, lawsuit claims

The reservation request didn’t seem out of the ordinary: Eight colleagues visiting the Bay Area for work were looking for an Airbnb with reliable Wi-Fi.

But at check-in time April 12, a Ring camera captured footage of people moving large, black cases into Sean Donovan’s home in San Francisco. Later that night, the security system was shut off.

Two days later, Donovan stopped by the house to take out the trash. He looked through a window and saw black cables taped to the walls. A man was typing on a laptop sitting next to what appeared to be a robot.

When his guests checked out 11 days later, the house was a mess, Donovan claims. Glasses and dishes had been removed from kitchen cabinets and left elsewhere. The dishwasher, refrigerator, and washing machine were scratched. Dishwasher racks were bent and removed. Wooden furniture was scratched and stained. Bathroom tiles were chipped. A shoe rack and several pairs of shoes were missing from a locked bedroom closet.

“What the hell is going on here?” Donovan recalled thinking.

After scouring the damage and conducting a bit of online sleuthing, he thinks he figured it out. In a lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court Tuesday, Donovan alleges that employees of the Bot Company (opens in new tab) rented his home “under false pretenses” to conduct prototype testing on robots they’re training to do household chores. Founded by alums of Tesla and the autonomous vehicle company Cruise, the San Francisco startup has received hundreds of millions in venture capital funding and is valued at $2 billion (opens in new tab), according to the tech research platform Sacra. The Bot Company did not respond to requests for comment.

Donovan is seeking $12,383.50 for damage to his home and belongings and for lost income he believes he would have received had the company correctly booked the property for commercial use. He is suing the Bot Company but not the individuals who rented the property.

Through his own research, Donovan concluded that the guests at his home worked for the Bot Company. The Standard has been unable to verify their employment status. 

“The dishonesty is really what upsets me the most,” he said. “If they had come straight up, ‘Hey, we would like to rent your house for testing of our robot,’ then we could have come to an agreement. But it’s the lying and the misrepresentation that makes me feel violated.”

It appears that he’s not the only Bay Area resident who has been duped.

Three of the guests connected to the April 12-25 booking for Donovan’s home have received negative reviews from at least 12 other Airbnb hosts alleging they damaged the property and personal belongings, failed to clean up, exceeded the limit on the number of guests, or violated other house rules during their stays.

The owner of an 1896 Victorian in Ingleside told The Standard he rented his home to three of the guests linked to the booking at Donovan’s house. When he returned home after the group’s six-night stay in March, he said, there were scuff marks on the walls and nicked paint on doorframes. A refrigerator shelf was cracked, and a broken glass or dish had been left in the garbage disposal. A wooden nightstand drawer was chipped. Cups and plates were in the wrong places. It looked like the furniture had been moved around.

“Sorry 🙁 Did my best!” said a pithy message the group left on a whiteboard on his scuffed-up dining table. 

“I just kind of assumed they might have had a party,” said the owner, who requested anonymity for privacy.

But then a neighbor told him they had seen people bringing big black boxes into the house, so the owner thought maybe they had filmed a movie.

“The robot thing kind of makes sense now,” the host said.

He spent a week cleaning and making repairs. He filed a claim with Airbnb for the damages, but the company rejected it, he said, citing his lack of before-and-after photos.

The group of guests never responded to his message about the damage, he said.

Like Donovan, the Ingleside homeowner said he would have been OK with a company renting his house to test robots had the employees been upfront about it.

“If they’re trying to better the lives of humans with robots, I’m all for that,” he said. “I think there’s a good future in that, but they don’t need to be all sneaky about it.”

Other negative reviews cited similar damage, though it’s unclear if these owners suspected there was a robotic culprit.

“Most of my hardwood kitchen cabinets were scratched/gouged after their stay,” a host in Burlingame wrote on Airbnb in February. “There were also some black streaks on my walls and baseboards. During their stay, they brought multiple large plastic cases and boxes at various times which I suspect caused the damage.”

Another February complaint came from a host in Foster City: “There was a lot of damage like significant deep scratches to the kitchen cabinets (like more than half of the kitchen), and nightstands, moved everything all over the place, and took some items.”

Bot Company has not revealed a prototype. Its bare-bones website (opens in new tab) states that it is “building a helpful robot for every home” that can do “all the little things that eat away at our time.”

Sacra describes the Bot Company’s product as resembling “a low coffee table on wheels,” with “an articulated arm and dual grippers” that allow it to “pick up and organize household items autonomously.” The website says the company plans to market its robot to families as well as “short-term rental operators, elder care providers, and small office facility teams.”

The irony is not lost on Donovan. 

“This company is trying to build robots to make Airbnb turnovers more easy,” Donovan said. “In the meantime, they are damaging Airbnb hosts’ houses.”

He said he and his partner spent several days repairing the damage. A reimbursement request he submitted to the guests through Airbnb is unresolved. His shoes? Still missing.

“I don’t know what will happen, and there are potential negative repercussions, but I also feel like what they’re doing is wrong,” Donovan said. “They’re doing it to lots of people, and they should stop and at least be honest with what they’re doing.”