CES sometimes feels like a gadget petting zoo: lots of promising prototypes, a few awkward hybrids, and the occasional downright dizzying breakthrough. This year the crowd paused for one of the latter. Roborock unveiled the Saros Rover, a robot vacuum that uses articulating wheel-legs to climb full staircases — and clean each tread as it goes.
What it does and how it moves
The Rover doesn’t look like a tiny humanoid. Think of it as a squat, clever platform fitted with four limbs that end in small wheels. Those limbs bend and extend in a froglike, independently controlled rhythm. In Roborock’s demo the machine could raise a leg, set itself down on the next step, pivot in place, and vacuum the riser and tread. It can also perform small hops to clear thresholds and negotiate slopes by braking, backing up, or rolling down under control.
Roborock says the system uses a mix of motion sensors, 3D spatial mapping, and onboard AI to coordinate balance and movement. The company claims the Rover can handle a wide range of stair types — straight, curved, carpeted, and even bullnose steps with rounded fronts — though the demo stairs were wide and idealized. The climb is deliberate: in one on-floor showcase it took just under three minutes for the robot to ascend five steps. Slow? Yes. Impressive? Also yes.
Why this matters — and why to be skeptical
If the Rover works as advertised in real homes, it solves a gripe robot-vacuum buyers have had for a decade: the upstairs stairs chore. Most vacuums avoid stairs entirely, and current workarounds — carrying the robot between floors or using docking lifts — are clumsy. A machine that can genuinely access multiple floors and clean stair corners would expand what people expect from an autonomous cleaner.
That said, demos and polished press claims don’t always match life with kids, rugs, stray socks and wobbly handrails. Even the most capable floor-cleaning robots often stumble when faced with cluttered, lived-in environments. Gizmodo and other outlets rightly warned to treat the Rover as an advanced prototype: lab success doesn’t guarantee everyday reliability. In public demos it occasionally teetered on a step edge; it didn’t fall, but the wobble is a reminder of how precarious balancing on uneven geometry can be.
Roborock is also choosing caution on features: the Rover shown is vacuum-only. The company says it’s still working out a mopping solution that would survive the stresses of stair-climbing motion. There are no firm specs yet — battery capacity, suction rating, noise levels, price and ship date remain unannounced — and company reps have indicated it will take time to reach retail. The Rover follows Roborock’s misstep last year with a vacuum-arm model that drew mixed reviews; the team seems determined not to rush.
Bigger picture: robots inch toward whole-home autonomy
This design isn’t an isolated stunt. The floor-robot market has been evolving fast — arms, appendages, little leg-like aids and even lift accessories have popped up across CES and trade shows. If devices like the Rover become robust and affordable, they’ll change what people expect from home robotics: not just a cleaner you ferry between levels, but a single unit that truly roams your house.
There are ecosystem implications, too. As smart-home interoperability expands — partly thanks to industry moves like IKEA’s push for Matter compatibility — consumers will want devices that move across floors and still play nicely with home networks, scheduling, and voice assistants. At the same time, the Rover’s reliance on on-device AI for balance and navigation ties into larger questions about how much autonomy we trust robots with; that discussion is part of a broader debate over AI’s real-world readiness among experts and skeptics.
Roborock isn’t promising a date. For now the Saros Rover is a tantalizing bridge between the little round vacuums that only ever clean flat floors and the more ambitious domestic robots designers have long sketched on whiteboards. It may be slow and cautious at first, but legged mobility that actually cleans stairs would be a useful piece of the whole‑home robot puzzle — if the company can translate the demo-floor magic into reliable, affordable hardware for messy, unpredictable homes.
Until then, expect more prototypes, more incremental experiments, and the occasional moment where a vacuum hops up a step to the sound of an entire aisle at CES collectively holding its breath.