CES promises the robot butler, but delivers better Roombas instead

If you perceive to the CES hype instrumentality this year, you mightiness deliberation that robots are yet fresh to return complete your home duties. To immoderate grade that’s true, but return statement of the plural: there’s nary azygous robot fresh to return complete each of your family chores yet, but an service of them conscionable might.

You mightiness person had 1 of these single-purpose robots successful your location for years already, of course. Robot vacuum cleaners person agelong been tin of automating a single, circumstantial task, and it’s nary astonishment that it’s the aforesaid companies down those bots pushing location robots guardant now.

Last CES, robot vacuums sewage arms, and 2026 is apparently the twelvemonth of legs. Roborock announced the Saros Rover, a vacuum connected 2 articulating, wheeled legs, which tin jump complete obstacles, navigate tricky terrain, and climb stairs. Dreame showed disconnected its ain legged conception vacuum, the Cyber X, astatine IFA past September, and it’s backmost astatine CES this week pinch its 4 vessel tread legs successful a creation I could only picture arsenic “extremely threatening.” More mundanely, Anker is launching a Eufy robovac that doubles arsenic a diffuser, spraying fragrance arsenic it goes. And almost each shaper successful the manufacture is now launching robotic mowers and pool cleaners, expanding the navigation tech down their vacuums into caller domains.

Then there’s the wave of robot toys and pets, from Ecovacs’ fluffy puppy LilMilo to Tuya and Robopoet’s Fuzozo, a Star Trek Tribble that has its ain cellular relationship truthful you tin get AI-enabled affectional support connected the go. Or FrontierX’s Vex, an autonomous robot camera that follows your pet astir to some movie — and edit — a video astir their day. Someone’s moreover made a real-life WALL-E, which does… something. That 1 doesn’t look each excessively practical, but it judge is cute. As for Samsung’s tiny projector bot Ballie, which was expected to spell connected waste successful 2025, it’s still MIA, and Samsung hasn’t moreover mentioned it astatine this year’s show truthful far.

It’s neat that you tin task a small robot pinch mowing your section aliases playing pinch your pet, but it’s not rather the early we were promised by the likes of The Jetsons’ Rosey the Robot, aliases Fantastic Four’s H.E.R.B.I.E. It’s not conscionable that the caller activity of CES announcements aren’t the expressive humanoid robots that person agelong dominated subject fiction, it’s that they each only do 1 thing. Want a robot to vacuum your floors? You sewage it. But if you want your section mowed and excavation cleaned excessively past that’s not 1 robot, it’s 3 — and a 4th if you want thing that looks tiny too.

This is echoing a inclination we’ve seen successful business robotics for immoderate time. Production lines and warehouses aren’t yet adopting humanoid robots that move from task to task, but they are investing heavy successful focused, specialized robots that tin transportation retired a azygous task much efficiently than immoderate quality worker can. I’ve seen that first hand: when I visited online market institution Ocado, whose robots grip online orders for Kroger crossed 14 US states, I saw robots for moving crates, packing bags, aliases loading trucks, but thing that was designed to do much than 1 of those jobs.

“When you person a controlled situation that you tin alteration and manipulate you’re mostly amended disconnected pinch a circumstantial instrumentality for a circumstantial job,” lawman CEO James Matthews told me, explaining that the “adaptability” cardinal to the entreaty of humanoid robots isn’t a privilege for Ocado, particularly since immoderate humanoid creation bakes successful galore of the aforesaid limitations that clasp humans themselves back.

Of course, that’s each good and bully successful an business environment. If Ocado designs a azygous robot that’s awesome astatine moving crates from 1 spot to another, and different that tin load those crates onto trolleys, it tin still spell up and build thousands of each to usage worldwide, and make it cost-efficient to do so. The mathematics feels a small different astatine home. If the awesome automated early involves buying 8 different robots for 8 different tasks, each much costly than the appliance it’s designed to replace, I’m not judge really galore group will motion up.

The manufacture hasn’t fixed up connected the do-it-all bot conscionable yet though. Boston Dynamics utilized this CES to unveil the production type of its humanoid Atlas, which genitor institution Hyundai plans to rotation retired into its ain factories. In the home, LG showed disconnected its humanoid robot CLOiD pinch a unrecorded objection of it ponderously loading a towel into a washing machine, while SwitchBot says its Onero H1, which tin apparently fold laundry and make breakfast, “represents a displacement toward robotics that tin accommodate to a wide scope of home scenarios.”

But these are the outliers, and for illustration Amazon’s and Tesla’s humanoid bots, they’re still much hype than substance. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas won’t participate the workforce until 2028 — and its wholly fixed CES debut didn’t animate excessively overmuch confidence. SwitchBot’s Onero is supposedly adjacent to launch, pinch preorders starting “soon,” but the unrecorded demos connected its booth showed a slow, elemental robot that’s not fresh to do your laundry yet.

LG’s CLOiD is much impressive, but still a prototype, pinch nary motion of a existent release, and LG is still hedging its bets. CLOiD is only 1 portion of its “Zero Labor Home” vision, which it imagines will see networks of appliances that “operate arsenic a azygous AI system.” That’s a much realistic outlook, person to what we already person than the imagination of a cheerful android tin of taking complete my chores.

We’re still not adjacent to Rosey the Robot moving our homes, but successful the meantime the robot gyration is coming 1 bot astatine a time.