Long-horizon task

A long-horizon task is a job made of many smaller steps that a robot has to complete one after another. Tidying a room is a good example: pick up the cup, carry it to the kitchen, open the dishwasher, put it in, close the door, then move on to the next item.

Each step may be easy on its own. The hard part is doing dozens of them in a row. One small mistake early on, like dropping the cup, can derail everything that follows.

That is why companies now report long chains in their demos. Xiaomi, for example, said its home system ran more than 50 small jobs across three rooms for over 30 minutes.