CES promises a robot valet, but offers better Roombas instead

If you listened to the hype at CES this year, you might think robots are finally ready to take over your homework. This is true to an extent, but pay attention to the plural: There isn’t a single robot ready to take over all your household chores yet, but there may be an army of them.

You’ve probably had one of these single-purpose robots in your home for years, of course. Robotic vacuum cleaners have always been able to automate one specific task, and it’s no surprise that the same companies behind those robots are now pushing home robotics forward.

At the recent CES, robotic vacuum cleaners got armsIt seems that 2026 is the year of legs. Roborock announced Saros rovera vacuum cleaner on two articulated legs with wheels, can jump over obstacles, navigate difficult terrain, and climb stairs. Dreame showed off its concept legged vacuum, the Cyber More mundanely, Anker is launching the Eufy robovac Doubles as a diffuserSpray perfume while walking. Almost every manufacturer in the industry is now launching Robotic mowers and Swimming pool cleanersand expanding the navigation technology behind their vacuum cleaners into new areas.

Then there A wave of robot and pet gamesfrom Ecovacs’ fluffy puppy LilMilo to Tuya and Robopoet’s Fuzozo, who is Star Trek Tribble has its own cellular connection so you can get AI-powered emotional support on the go. or FrontierX’s Vexan autonomous robotic camera that follows your pet to film and edit a video of their day. Someone even WALL-E is made realisticwhich does… something. This product doesn’t look very practical, but it sure is cute. As for Samsung’s cute presentation robot, Ballie, which… It was supposed to go on sale in 2025It’s still MIA, and Samsung hasn’t even mentioned it at this year’s show yet.

It’s great that you can commission a little robot to mow your lawn or play with your pet, but that’s not quite the future that the likes of The Jetsons Rosie the Robot, or Fantastic FourNot only are the new wave of CES ads not just the expressive humanoid robots that have long dominated sci-fi, but they each do just one thing. Do you want a robot to clean your floors? I got it. But if you want to mow your lawn and clean your pool, too, this is not one robot, but three — and a fourth if you want something that looks nice, too.

This reflects a trend that we have seen in industrial robotics for some time. Production lines and warehouses have not yet embraced humanoid robots that move from one task to another, but they are investing heavily in specialized, focused robots that can perform a single task more efficiently than any human worker. I’ve seen it myself: When I visited online grocery company Ocadowhose robots handle online orders for Kroger in 14 U.S. states, saw robots moving boxes, packing bags, or loading trucks, but nothing designed to do more than one of these jobs.

“When you have a controlled environment that you can change and manipulate, it’s generally better to use a specific tool for a specific job,” executive vice-president James Matthews told me, explaining that the “adaptability” essential to the appeal of humanoid robots is not a priority for Ocado, especially since any humanoid design involves many of the same constraints that hamper humans themselves.

Of course, this is all well and good in an industrial environment. If Ocado designed one robot that would be great at moving boxes from one place to another, and another that could load those boxes onto trolleys, they could still go ahead and build thousands of each for use around the world, and make it cost-effective to do so. The math looks a little different at home. If the great robotic future involved purchasing eight different robots for eight different tasks, each more expensive than the machine it was designed to replace, I’m not sure how many people would sign up.

The industry hasn’t given up on the do-it-all robot yet. Boston Dynamics used this CES to unveil… Production version of her human atlaswhich the parent company Hyundai plans to introduce in its own factories. At home, LG demonstrated its CLOiD humanoid robot through a live demonstration Load the towel heavily into the washing machinewhile SwitchBot says it’s the Onero H1which can apparently fold laundry and prepare breakfast, “represents a shift toward robots that can adapt to a wide range of domestic scenarios.”

But these are outliers, and like Amazon and Tesla’s humanoid robots, they are still more hype than substance. Boston Dynamics’ Atlas won’t enter the workforce until 2028 — and its completely static appearance at CES didn’t inspire much confidence. SwitchBot’s Onero is supposedly close to launching, with pre-orders starting “soon,” but live demos on its booth showed a slow, simple robot that’s not ready to do laundry yet.

LG’s CLOiD is more impressive, but it’s still a prototype, with no sign of a real release, and LG is still hedging its bets. CLOiD is just one part of its “Labour-Free Home” vision, which it imagines will include networks of devices that “act as a single AI system.” This is a more realistic view, closer to what we already have of the delightful fantasy of a robot that can take over my household chores.

We’re still nowhere near Rosie the robot running our homes, but in the meantime, one robot revolution after another is coming.