CES sets the stage for robot vacuums to reach new heights

There were a lot of innovations in robot vacuums on the CES show floor this year, from arms and legs to extendable mops, mobile towersand new navigation systems.

As the industry races forward in its quest to find the best way to clean our floors, it can be difficult to see the function through all the hype. I spent the last week in Las Vegas hanging out with our robot friends to find out how much better they are. Here’s a look at all the new technology that came out and how could help keep your floors shiny.

The main focus of flagship robovacs in recent years has been obstacle avoidance. The addition of AI-powered camera navigation systems has helped robots avoid tripping over socks, slippers and toys, but it means they won’t actually clean your entire floor.

The solution: add a robotic arm to move items out of the way. by Roborock Saros Z70 and Dreame concept of vacuum both showed what a robovac can do, given a robotic claw on top.

Both companies say they have software that will let you designate where items go, leaving the vacuum tidy for you in a whole new way. Roborock said that you can designate an area for the bot to place the things it cleans, and Dreame said that its concept vac will be able to place specific items in specific places, such as cat toys from the cat bed or shoes from the front door. I didn’t demoed their app, though, so I didn’t get to see how it works.

The biggest limitation for these arms is weight: Roborock’s can only pick up light items up to 300 grams – it’s currently programmed for socks, tissues, small towels and sandals. Dreame says that it will be able to hold up to 500 grams, which means that it can cope with shoes (a sneaker in a men’s size 42/9). But only Roborock actually demonstrated its robot picking up something – and that was just a sock.

Dreame’s arm looks sturdier. It’s bigger and thicker with a fatter grip. But I didn’t touch it. I got to play with the arm of the Saros Z70, and it felt surprisingly strong, especially for how slim it is.

What Dreame’s arm has that Roborock doesn’t (yet) are attachments. Dreame showed a small toolbox that held two brushes – a damp sponge and a bristle brush. The idea is that the robot can attach these to its arms and then get into corners and the main robot can’t. I haven’t seen the robot actually do any of this, though, so it’s still a concept.

The makers of Robovac add appendages to the other side of their bots. Both Dreame’s vacuum concept and his the new Ultra X50 has two legs – small appendages that extend from under his body to lift him up.

The legs are not jointed; they are just levers that help propel the bot through a step, and then its forward momentum knocks them down as it passes the step. The benefit here is to navigate high room transitions, not really stairs. So, if you have a small step between your living room and the kitchen or a high transition between the tile floor in your bathroom and the carpet in your bedroom, these robots should be able to move between the two.

This is mostly just an extension of the chassis lifting technology we have seen from Roborock, Shark, and a few others. The X50 Ultra by Dreame adds greater height with its technology – up to 6 cm. Unfortunately, this does not feel like the precursor to actually climbing the stairs that I had hoped for. That still seems to be a total redesign of the chassis and several years away.

A less eye-catching trend that emerged at CES was around mopping. Ecovacs, Switchbotand Narwhal all robot vacuum cleaners debuted with roller mops that can extend outwards to reach along the baseboards and in the corners. This is a change from the spinning, oscillating mops that have been popular for the past few years.

Roller mops began to spread on the taste Eufy Omni S1 Pro and the SwitchBot S10 last year, and – in my experience – they are better than oscillating mops. They have a wider surface and self-clean as they go, so they do not need to return to the base often to clean their mops. But the current models cannot cover all your floors, because they cannot reach the edges, which most oscillating mops can be extended from the main body. Hopefully these new extended roller mops will address this issue.

The Ecovac model – the Deebot X8 Pro Omni – also add a hot water tank to the robot itself, not only in the base station. This means that not only can you clean your floors with hot water, but you can also keep your mop clean with it while you work.

The other innovation on the show floor that caught my eye was a mop exchange station from Dreame (and its sub-brand Mova). This allows you to designate specific mop pads for specific rooms. The robot will return to the station and exchange its pads to use a fresh pair for the kitchen, say, after cleaning the bathroom. This can help with concerns about cross contamination. I am interested in trying this, but my initial impression is that the self-cleaning roller mop is a simpler and more streamlined solution.

The other big robotic navigation trend this year is retractable lidar towers. Lidar has long been the preferred navigation technology for most robot vacs, but that pesky tower on top can prevent them from getting under low furniture.

U Dreame X50 Ultra, Roborock Saros 10and Move V50 Ultra they are all new bots that can hit their towers to get into more places. How well they’ll do when they’re under the bed without their lidar tower, though, is something I need to test.

Lidar is also augmented by more sensors and AI to help robot vacuums better understand your home. The idea here is a bot that can seamlessly navigate around your home and get to know the unruly rugs in the living room, rather than creating holding zones in the app to make sure it doesn’t get derailed.

Roborock has debuted a new one StarSight navigation technology at IFA last yearr on its Qrevo Slim, which is designed to do exactly that. At CES, the company announced that it is bringing a more advanced version of StarSight to its Saros Z70 and Saros 10R.

According to Roborock, StarSight Autonomous System 2.0 traditional Lidar pit for a dual transmitter Solid state lidar with 3D time of flight sensors for distance sensing and AI-powered RGB cameras for navigating and maneuvering around obstacles. Roborock says StarSight helps the robot deal with more complex plans and houses by using more sensors to feed the onboard AI.

While I had a poor experience with Ecovacs X2 Omnithat used solid state lidar, I tried Qrevo Slim for a while, and has been largely reliable. So I’m excited to try the more advanced version.

Ultimately, the goal of all these innovations is a better cleaning of the floor with less intervention from us. All I want is a robotic vacuum cleaner that can reliably and efficiently reach every inch of my floor without me having to run first or have to save it from under a chair leg. From what I saw at CES this week, we’re getting a lot closer.