A robot vacuum cleaner moves across the floor and, as it approaches a sock, slowly extends a robotic arm. With a tweezer, he picks it up and carries it to a box full of socks. It is the Roborock Saros Z70, a device that uses artificial intelligence to identify, pick up and place objects. This test was carried out in a Las Vegas hotel during CES, the most influential consumer electronics fair in the world, which takes place this week. Robot vacuum cleaners are destined to revolutionize the future of cleaning, but they are not the only ones: there are also those that clean the windows or the toilet, mow the grass or wash the windows. How will technology change home cleaning? Will there come a future in which no time will be dedicated to this work?
For Álvaro Martínez, director of public relations in Spain at Roborock, the company that has invited Morning Express to CES, the cleaning robot sector “has been evolving a lot, towards greater intelligence, greater functionalities, more resistant and adaptable materials when cleaning and, above all, towards greater passivity in the cleaning process.” According to Martínez, the objective is clear: “That the user has to intervene as little as possible.”
Among the robot vacuum cleaners shown at CES, those from other companies also stand out, such as the Eureka J15 Max Ultra, which uses infrared vision and sensors to detect transparent liquid stains, or the Dreame X50 Ultra, which can deploy two legs to overcome smaller obstacles. four centimeters, such as cables or low furniture. “You no longer have to go rescue the robot, it will continue cleaning and doing its job,” says Ana Serafin-Gil, from the company Dreame.
Roborock’s Saros 10 and Saros 10R models can be controlled by voice and have a side brush that deploys to prevent hair from getting tangled in the device. Thanks to multiple sensors and cameras, artificial intelligence allows this type of robots to identify the type of floor in each room. Cleaning on wood is not the same as cleaning on marble or a carpet. “The suction power, the level of detergent needed or the amount of water used vary depending on the surface of the floor being cleaned,” says Martínez. Among the improvements of these devices in recent years, the expert highlights the charging and storage base, the use of advanced laser sensors and the algorithms that allow the robot to locate itself and map its environment at the same time.
As Weijie Han, an employee at the Narwal robot vacuum cleaner company, points out, “there is a lot to clean in homes” and there are still tasks that robots cannot do. In fact, Spaniards spend on average almost three hours a week cleaning, according to research carried out by the online cleaning services contracting platform Clintu.
Cleaning windows and the garden, next challenge
In addition to taking care of the floor, robotic cleaners are beginning to be asked for other challenges such as cleaning mirrors, closets or sofas: “These are spaces that currently cannot be covered by a robot vacuum cleaner and that only people can take care of” . Some companies are working to change it. Martínez points out that the sensors, navigation systems and machine learning algorithms developed for robot vacuum cleaners are being adapted to other products such as smart lawnmowers and window cleaners. The Winbot W2 Omni from Ecovacs is a robot designed to clean windows inside and out, with a portable station included.
Outside the house, some robots already help with cleaning tasks. This is the case of the WYBOT S2 Solar Vision, which cleans the pool and returns autonomously to an underwater charging station that is powered by solar energy. Another example is the Dreame Z1, which cleans the walls, bottom and water surface of swimming pools and, when finished, automatically returns to its charging base.
In the case of lawns, one of the robots that has attracted the most attention in this edition of CES is Lymow One, a robot that incorporates dual shredding blades that allow leaves, branches and other waste to be decomposed and converted into fertilizer for the lawn. There are also robots designed to clean the toilet, grills or clothes. These tasks don’t have to be easy for a robot. “To paraphrase Moravec’s paradox, winning a game of chess or discovering a new drug are problems easy for AI to solve, but folding a shirt or cleaning a table requires solving some of the most difficult engineering problems ever conceived,” indicate the creators of a robot that washes and folds clothes.
Although robots have made significant progress in cleaning horizontal surfaces, there is still no one capable of completely cleaning the kitchen, living room or bathroom autonomously. “Currently, it is not possible to achieve a comprehensive house cleaning experience passively only with intelligent robots,” says Martínez. For Serafin-Gil, the future in which nothing needs to be cleaned is still far away. “Knowing us humans, we are such perfectionists about cleaning our house that even if someone else cleans it, we think, ‘He didn’t do it right, I have to do it myself.’ “We will never be completely satisfied,” he says.
