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On February 6, 2026, Australia's A Current Affair kicked off its 2026 season with a familiar question: are robot cleaners that far away? For Americans, parts of that future are already in the living room. Since 2025, the home-robotics market has moved well beyond wheeled floor scrubbers. We now have vacuum cleaners with robot arms, rolling AI companions, and humanoids stepping into test households. The promise of coming home to spotless rooms, finished laundry, and a warm dinner is closer than ever—and still messier than the marketing suggests.
For more than a decade, a robot vacuum looked the same: a flat disc, a spinning brush, and a tiny dustbin. That design just broke open. In 2025, Roborock's Saros Z70 became the first mainstream robot vacuum with a foldable robotic arm. The so-called OmniGrip arm can lift small items—a tissue, a sock, a stray charging cable—off the floor before the mopping pads slide in. It was the buzz of CES, and rivals quickly followed with their own arm-equipped models.
The arm is slower than a human hand, and it still trips on certain objects. But the point isn't perfection. It signals that makers no longer think of these machines as vacuums. They're building household assistants that can deal with the mess before cleaning it—which is what separates robots from appliances.
Meanwhile, the charging docks that come with newer models have turned into tiny laundry rooms of their own. Many now auto-empty dust bags, wash and dry mopping pads, and refill water tanks. The owner's job is shrinking to pressing a button on a phone while sitting on the couch.
Samsung went in a different direction. Its Ballie robot launched in the US in 2025 with a $899 price tag, and it looks like a tennis ball on wheels. Ballie doesn't clean much. Instead, it rolls around the house, follows people from room to room, checks on pets, answers questions, and beams video onto walls using its built-in projector.
It's easy to dismiss Ballie as a toy with a projector. But the fact that a major electronics brand shipped an AI companion with cameras and autonomous navigation into ordinary homes is a turning point. It proves the home-robotics market is no longer about just floors. It's about a machine sharing your space, learning your routines, and being useful in ways that don't involve a mop.
The most dramatic shift is happening with humanoid robots. 1X Technologies, a company with roots in Norway, has spent the past year running limited home trials with its NEO robot. NEO is designed specifically for domestic spaces: soft, padded, and tall enough to load a dishwasher or fold towels. The company started taking applications from households willing to test it, and early videos show NEO doing slow, careful versions of chores people didn't think a robot could touch.
Tesla has even bigger ambitions. At its October 2024 "We, Robot" event, dozens of Optimus units walked among guests, served drinks, and chatted—though remote operators were involved. Musk promised that by 2026 Optimus would be doing useful work inside Tesla's own facilities before eventually entering homes. The timeline is famously optimistic, but the direction is real: the most-watched carmaker on Earth is betting that humanoids belong in kitchens.
Figure, which raised billions for its own humanoid efforts, showed a different path. Its Helix AI model demonstrated robots putting away groceries and handling objects they'd never seen. Figure is targeting factories first, but the underlying technology is aimed straight at domestic tasks later.
Cleaning floors is repetition. Cooking and laundry are judgment calls. That's why the second half of the dream—washing done, dinner served—remains the hardest part for robot developers.
Laundry folding, in particular, has humbled the industry. Startups like Laundroid and FoldiMate promised folding machines years ago, raised money, and then quietly disappeared. Fabric is floppy, unpredictable, and every shirt is shaped differently. A robot hand that can pick up a metal gear in a factory struggles to fold a fitted sheet.
Cooking is similarly stubborn. Moley Robotics has shown an entire robotic kitchen that can prepare gourmet meals under a pair of articulated arms. It's a stunning demo—and wildly expensive, with costs that keep it out of reach for almost every household. Cheaper countertop cooking robots with pre-packaged ingredient pods have gone through prototypes, but none has reached meaningful US retail volume.
In other words, the two chores that matter most at the end of a long day are exactly the ones current robots do worst.
So why has everything suddenly sped up? The answer is not better mechanical parts. It's software.
The biggest breakthroughs in robotics are happening in AI models that combine vision, language, and action. These systems let a machine "see" an object it has never encountered—a sneaker, a remote control, a fork—and figure out how to grasp it, move it, and place it. The old robots were programmed like assembly lines: pick up this, move there, repeat. New robots are taught through demonstration, video, and trial and error, which is exactly what they need for unpredictable homes.
At the same time, sensors and processors have gotten dramatically cheaper thanks to smartphones, drones, and the automotive industry. A robot with enough computing power to handle a living room cost what a small car did a decade ago. Now that same capability fits into a $700 vacuum.
That blend of cheaper hardware and smarter software is why home robots are improving in months, not years.
If you're shopping for real relief today, the smart move is still a high-end robot vacuum and mop with an auto-empty dock. It does one job well, doesn't need supervision, and has proven itself over years of use. The new arm-equipped models are worth watching, but early software updates will be needed before they're worth the premium.
A machine like Samsung's Ballie can be fun and genuinely handy for pet owners and people who want a voice-controlled rolling assistant. Just don't expect it to scrub a toilet.
Humanoids like 1X's NEO or Tesla's Optimus aren't on store shelves, and every announced timeline should be taken with skepticism. They're advancing fast, but reliability in a cluttered house—with pets, children, and open flames—is the ultimate test. One mid-dinner breakdown erases years of goodwill.
There are also concerns that get less airtime than the demos. An always-on robot with cameras and microphones creates real privacy questions. Most manufacturers say data is processed locally or encrypted, but consumers should read the fine print before inviting a device with eyes into every room.
Safety matters too. Unlike a factory, a home has no controlled zones, no safety cages, and no trained operators. A robot that bumps into a toddler or grabs the wrong object is a liability, and companies know it. That caution is a big reason full chore takeover is taking longer than YouTube videos suggest.
A Current Affair asked whether robot cleaners are that far away. The honest answer: parts are already here, and the rest is probably a few product cycles off. Millions of homes already let a robot scrub the floors. Millions more will soon let a robot pick up the clutter. The full promise—walk in the door to a spotless house, folded laundry, and a hot meal—is no longer impossible. But the smartest approach is to let robots earn trust one chore at a time.
