Ask yourself: when was the last time your vacuum climbed a stair? At CES 2026 the answer quickly became "soon, maybe" — or at least, "in prototype form." The show floor was dominated by two related but very different approaches to multi‑level cleaning: vacuums that hoist themselves up steps and clunky, tank‑like carriers that transport a cleaner between floors.
The headline act: Roborock’s Saros Rover
Roborock stole a lot of the headlines with the Saros Rover, a two‑wheeled machine that replaces a conventional drivetrain with articulating, leg‑like assemblies. The legs can independently raise and bend, letting the Rover vault small thresholds, pivot tightly and — most notably — ascend stairs while actively cleaning. PCMag crowned it their Best Smart Home Tech at CES after a controlled demo where the bot climbed a step, turned, scrubbed, and continued. The company said the Rover uses motion sensors and AI to build 3D spatial maps; in theory that could let it tackle straight or curved staircases and uneven slopes without getting hopelessly stuck.
Why that matters: most current robot vacuums avoid stairs entirely for safety, so a machine that can both reach and clean multiple floors changes expectations for what a single device could do in a split‑level home. Roborock hasn’t given a price or release window yet, and real‑world performance will be the real test — stairs at trade shows are controlled environments, not the cord‑and‑toy littered chaos of many households.
Legs vs. treads: Dreame’s Cyber X and two design philosophies
Dreame’s answer takes a different tack. The Cyber X concept — first teased at IFA last year and shown again at CES — looks, as some journalists politely put it, a little unsettling. Four large treads do the heavy lifting: the apparatus crawls like a tiny tracked vehicle and either carries a cleaning unit inside or docks a separate robot vacuum in a compartment while traversing stairs. During Dreame’s demo the device climbed a full flight of steps; the company claims it can manage rises up to about 25 cm (nearly 10 inches) and slopes up to 42 degrees. Engadget observed that the vacuum itself wasn’t necessarily cleaning while the chassis climbed — instead, the Cyber X moves the cleaner to another floor.
There’s a practical upside to the Cyber X design: by separating locomotion from cleaning, the climbing rig can focus on stability and traction (and braking safety if power dies) while a smaller, lighter bot handles suction and mopping on flat surfaces. The downside is complexity: a two‑part system is heavier, pricier and introduces more points of failure.
Suction wars, mops that rinse themselves, and roller heads
Beyond stair tricks, CES showed the category doubling down on fundamentals. Manufacturers are pushing huge suction figures (Roborock and Dreame each showed flagship models claiming up to 35,000 Pa), while mopping tech has evolved quickly: roller mops that rinse themselves mid‑clean, vibrating sonic pads that reach baseboards, and smart water control that heats or times scrubbing depending on sensed dirt.
Narwal’s Flow 2, for instance, pairs a roller mop that self‑rinses with up to 30,000 Pa of suction; Roborock’s Saros 20 and Saros 20 Sonic are each built around 35,000 Pa claims but differ in mopping approach — one with dual spinning pads, the other with an extendable vibrating pad intended to hit edges. Roborock also intends a midrange Qrevo Curv 2 Flow (a roller mop model) to arrive at consumer price points soon, with a promotional price shown at CES.
The bigger story: smarter maps, more specialization
These advances aren’t just hardware stunts. Better spatial awareness and AI are the glue that make complex movement feasible; companies are pairing LiDAR, 3D sensors and on‑device processing to parse stairs, furniture legs, and cables. Consumer mapping and navigation advances elsewhere in tech hint at a broader arms race: conversational and spatial AI are being baked into everyday products, and navigation systems like those in phones and cars are becoming more context‑aware. For an industry perspective on how mapping and AI are moving into consumer devices, see the way Google is layering Gemini into navigation tools Google Maps Gets Gemini: A Conversational AI Copilot for Navigation.
At the same time, robot vendors increasingly see the home as a collection of specialized tasks — vacuuming, mopping, mowing lawns — rather than expecting one device to do everything. That’s reflected in CES booths full of robo‑mowers and pool cleaners as well as single‑purpose vacuums; and it’s part of the same smart‑home trend that companies are trying to simplify with standardization and cheaper devices, for example through larger Matter rollouts that aim to make smart ecosystems easier to manage IKEA’s 21-Device Matter Push Makes Smart Homes Cheaper and Simpler.
Reality check: prototypes, promises and practicality
A quick note of skepticism is warranted. The most eye‑catching demos were prototypes. Roborock’s Rover performed impressively on a show floor course, but we didn’t see a full back‑and‑forth between floors or long‑term reliability data. Dreame’s Cyber X looks convincing as a research concept but hasn’t been announced for sale. And even the high‑suction champions must prove they can maintain performance across carpets, pet hair, and household clutter without excessive noise or maintenance.
Still, CES 2026 felt like a pivot: incremental improvements in suction and mopping plus a fresh focus on mobility. Whether legged or treaded, the new crop of robots is trying to solve a practical problem — getting from room to room and floor to floor without you hauling them — and that’s a useful kind of ambition. If we’re lucky, these experiments will mean fewer trips up and down the stairs with a clunky upright vacuum. If we’re unlucky, we’ll be telling stories about the year our vacuum tried to adopt the stairs as its personal workout routine.