Smart homes have gotten good at thinking, but they’re terrible at doing.

The idea of a connected house has been around for decades, first capturing two audiences: people who grew up inside a RadioShack and people with too much money. They wired up whole-house sound systems in the 90s, added motorized shades in the 2000s, security cameras a decade later, and couldn’t stop evangelizing at dinner parties. Like HiFi audio and other expensive religions, the satisfaction seemed mostly in the accomplishment itself. Whether these gadgets actually improved daily life was anyone’s guess.

Then something shifted. Smart locks - the August in particular - proved this technology could solve real problems by automating things you do every day: turning your deadbolt as you come and go. Nest let you adjust temperature remotely. Ring let you see who was at the door. Each solved an actual daily friction, then expanded in ways that became irreplaceable: guest access codes, energy savings when you’re away, recordings of porch pirates.

Today, Google, Apple, Samsung, and every major tech company is racing to become the brain of your connected home. Want lights that turn on when you arrive and your favorite playlist to start? Easy. Want the robot vacuum to clean only the kitchen, only at night? Done. The digital orchestration is nearly flawless.

But ask your smart home to open the door and welcome guests inside? To move furniture for a party? To crack windows on a beautiful spring morning? Suddenly you’re back to doing it yourself.

This is the wall every smart home hits: they can command existing devices but can’t touch the physical world. They can’t carry your groceries from the car, can’t flip your mattress, can’t water the plants you forgot about. The most useful household tasks still require hands.

Before you ask: no, I don’t think humanoid robots are the solution, at least in the near term. It’s one thing to manufacture the hardware and another thing entirely to keep them from accidentally killing your pets, shattering your dinnerware, or creeping you out at night. I think the solution is more intermediate: embedding more capabilities into the things you see and use every day.

A robot house needs arms and legs. That’s the next frontier: smart homes that don’t just think about your space, but can actually reshape it.