We Spent Hours Watching A Robot Vacuum Pick Up Socks. It’s a Real Dream

Imagine a robot vacuum cleaner. Now imagine a mechanical arm reaching out in front of him to pick up a sock that someone has peeled off and throw it on the ground. And now imagine this same robot vacuum picking up a bunch of discarded items and putting them in order, while cleaning your floor. It’s the Roborock Saros Z70, a new robot vacuum cleaner that we’ve spent hours working our socks off (clean!) to demonstrate an innovative feature in the world of mechanized cleaning. It’s a first. And it’s a dream come true.

In a Las Vegas hotel room CES 2025And even earlier in a small demo in New York for journalists, we saw the Roborock Saros Z70 size up sock after sock, pinching with a mechanical arm. It was so much fun to watch, we made the robot vacuum clean the same socks over and over again. If the robots ever decide to rise up, we hope they’ll forgive us.

The Roborock Saros Z70 is the first mass market robot vacuum cleaner with a mechanical arm designed to pick up and move larger debris while cleaning. At the preview event in New York before CES and at the fair, we noticed that Saros’s arm can’t always pick up an item on the first try, and the number of objects it can handle is small enough to now But the technology shows the potential to go far beyond socks. The five-axis robotic arm, called OmniGrip, can pick up things weighing as much as 300 grams — about 10.5 ounces — and deposit them in designated areas where you tell them to.

The Saros Z70 is not yet on the market, although Roborock told us that they expect it to be available in the first half of the year. Pricing is not yet available, but high-end robot vacuums regularly run $1,500 or more. Here’s what we saw in the hours we spent watching this little robot.

A glitchy start gave way to an impressive display

In its debut on stage at the Soho House members’ club in midtown Manhattan before CES, Roborock’s Saros Z70 prototype initially refused to come out of its chamber (who among us didn’t suffer from fear of scene?), a mechanical glitch that we have ensured has been. remedied for retail version.

After a few false starts, the arm was released from its cockpit, at which time the slender circular vac approached a loose sock, sending its arm twisting up and down to catch it, much like those toys infernos of clawed machines found in arcades.

Once it was gone, the robot arm grabbed several socks. He abandoned the occasional pick-up, but did not give up until he had it in his clutches, and then duly brought each one to a single area of ​​the stage designated by a representative of the brand through the mobile app . A company representative told us that the current version is better at recognizing black socks than white ones.

While the demo was mostly controlled, the final version of the vacuum will search for and remove debris on its own during regular cleaning cycles. During an initial sweep, the Saros Z70 should perform normal functions, but also detect and mark the objects it can lift. In theory, it will then look back to items such as socks, tissues and small towels to clean during a second round of cleaning.

The Saros Z70 is able to detect up to 108 different obstacles. While the list of objects OmniGrip can actually lift is much smaller, more items will be supported in future software updates, according to Roborock’s official release. Those who buy the first generation model can expect remote improvements to the OmniGrip without having to shell out more dough.

It already recognizes more than socks

In Las Vegas, we spent over an hour with the robot as it picked up socks in a hotel room. One caveat is that the vacuum cleaner followed a fairly prescribed routine – he would go in a straight line, pick up a sock that he would put on the side of his track, then proceed a few feet to drop it in a basket and back, long. that straight line, at its base. Roborock said that this program, designed for demonstration, prevented him from following his usual routine, which would include starting the map of the room. Rather than stand there while the robot vacuum cleaner slipped into a suite at The Venetian, he kept to a tight schedule.

This does not mean that we did not see the machine trying to solve the problem. A company representative told us what types of items he was scheduled to take – socks, towels, small pieces of paper and sandals. We launched a wool cap, which is basically a sock. The Roborock had no trouble identifying it and taking it.

It was fascinating watching the void to figure out how to get something. Sometimes he would walk past the sock he was supposed to pick up, and we would all sigh in disappointment that he was going to fail. But then he turned and looked behind him, and successfully picked up the sock.

Not every run was a success. Sometimes he would try to grab an object and it would slip out of his grasp. At other times, he seemed to rebel against being a trade fair prototype, spontaneously deciding to start mapping the room.

A robot vacuum cleaner with more to learn

While the list of objects that the vacuum can identify is relatively small, Roborock plans to add more as it develops the software’s intelligence to do so. Future updates could include the ability to pick up toys or cat shoes and put them where they should go. The smarter you get with the mechanical arm, the more you can imagine a robot vacuum that can really clean a messy, dirty floor with little preparation.

You should not catch your child or cat by accident

If you’re worried about the arm grabbing an innocent cat or a lock of a child’s hair, Roborock says the arm’s grip isn’t strong enough to hurt you. In case, the vacuum cleaner includes a lock for children and a safety stop button, which allows an immediate closure in any scenario.

There are also features for pets that allow you to control your pets, capture snapshots and plan cruises on demand. The vacuum cleaner moves aside when approaching the animal to avoid scaring it.

New advanced object recognition

While the grasping arm gets most of the glory, none of its performance would be possible without precision sensors, a camera and an LED light attached to the robot’s slim frame, all of which are controlled by the recognition system Roborock’s StarSight target and navigation system. .

“Instead of using a traditional LDS (lidar) tower module for navigation, the system integrates next-generation dual-light 3D time-of-flight sensors and AI-powered RGB cameras to determine its position, environment and if the target is overweight,” said Roborock in a statement.

Arm aside, this is in the form of a top-notch robot vacuum cleaner

In addition to its new sticky attachment, the Roborock Saros Z70 has the basics of robovac. It has 22,000 Pa of suction power, combined with a dual anti-tangle system, which stretches to prevent hair from getting tangled around the vacuum cleaner. The machine’s dual-rotation mops can lift up to 2.2 centimeters (just under an inch), allowing for increased air circulation and faster drying and preventing the vacuum from dragging dirt onto surfaces clean All this comes in one of the slimmest robot vacuums on the market at just 7.98 cm (3.14 inches) tall.