CES 2023 showcased a wave of innovations in robot vacuums, from robotic arms for picking up clutter to extendable mops for reaching every corner.
There were a slew of innovations in robot vacuums on the CES show floor this year, from arms and legs to extendable mops, movable towers, and new navigation systems. As the industry races ahead in its quest to find the best way to clean our floors, it can be hard to see the function through all the hype. I spent the last week in Las Vegas hanging with our robot friends to find out just how much better they’re getting.
Here’s a look at all the new tech that came out and how it could help keep your floors sparklingly clean. \Arms for picking up after you The main focus of flagship robovacs over the last few years has been obstacle avoidance. Adding AI-powered camera navigation systems has helped robots avoid getting stuck on socks, slippers, and toys, but it means they haven’t actually cleaned all of your floor. The solution: adding a robotic arm to move the items out of the way. Roborock’s Saros Z70 and Dreame’s concept vacuum both showed off what a robovac can do, given a robotic claw on top. Both companies say they have software that will allow you to designate where items get placed, letting the vacuum tidy up for you in a whole new way. Roborock said you can designate an area for the bot to put things it cleans up, and Dreame said its concept vac will be able to put specific items in specific places, such as cat toys by the cat bed or shoes by the front door. Neither demoed their app, however, so I didn’t get to see how this 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 washcloths, and sandals. Dreame says its will be capable of up to 500 grams, which means it can tackle shoes ( a sneaker up a men’s size 42/9). But only Roborock actually demoed its robot picking anything up — and that was just a sock. Dreame’s arm does look more robust. It’s bigger and thicker with a fatter pincer claw. But I didn’t get to touch it. I did get to play with the Saros Z70’s arm, and it felt surprisingly strong, especially for how slim it is. What Dreame’s arm has that Roborock’s doesn’t (yet) are attachments. Dreame showed off a small toolbox that stored two brushes — a sponge for wet messes and a bristle brush. The idea is that the robot can attach these to its arms and then get into nooks and crannies the main robot can’t. I didn’t get to see the robot actually do any of this, though, so it's all still a concept. \Climbing to new heights Robovac makers are adding appendages on the other side of their bots as well. Both Dreame’s concept vacuum and its new Ultra X50 have two little legs — small appendages that extend from under their body to lift them up. They’re not articulating legs; they’re just small levers that help propel the bot up onto a step, and then its forward momentum knocks them down as it passes the step. The benefit here is navigating high room transitions, not really stairs. So, if you have a small step between your living room and 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 lift technology we’ve seen from Roborock, Shark, and a few others. Dreame’s X50 Ultra adds larger heights with its tech — up to 6 cm. Sadly, this doesn't feel like the precursor to actually climbing the stairs that I’d hoped for. That appears to be still an entire chassis redesign and several years away. \More mopping A less eye-catching trend that emerged at CES was around mopping. Ecovacs, Switchbot, and Narwal all debuted robot vacuums with roller mops that can extend outwards to reach along baseboards and into corners. This is a shift from the spinning, oscillating mops that have been popular for the last few years. Roller mops started rolling out on the likes of the 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 area and self-clean as they go, so they don’t have to return to the base frequently to clean their mops. But current models fail to cover all of your floors, as they can’t reach the edges, which most oscillating mops can as they extend out from the main body. Hopefully, these new extending roller mops will tackle this problem. Ecovac’s model — the Deebot X8 Pro Omni — also adds a hot water tank to the robot itself, not just in the base station. This means that not only can it clean your floors with hot water, but it can also keep its mop clean with it as it’s working. The other innovation on the show floor that caught my eye was a mop-swapping station from Dreame (and its sub-brand Mova). This lets you designate specific mop pads for specific rooms. The robot will go back to the station and swap its pads to use a fresh pair for the kitchen, say, after cleaning the bathroom. This can help with concerns about cross-contaminatio
ROBOT VACUUMS CES INNOVATIONS MOPPING ARMS
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