Robot vacuums have climbed to a new level. Literally. What happens when a category clears a major hurdle?

I wrote a while back that robot vacuums don’t work in my house.

They’re just not feasible, with too many stairs. Four different levels. Split landings and thresholds.

The robot we tried noisily cleaned one floor and ignored the rest of the architecture by default.

That limitation has been structural and fixed since the very first version.

But at CES 2026, Roborock showed the Saros Rover, a prototype robot vacuum with actual articulated legs.

Not treads or a lift shell, but real wheel-legs that lever the body up each stair, clean the step … then climb again.

Photo: Ajay Kumar/CNET

It takes 30 to 40 seconds to climb five steps. Slow by human standards, but revolutionary by category standards.

Previous attempts from Dreame and Eufy could overcome small thresholds or climb stairs in demos, but they could not clean each step. This one can. It balances, stops mid-incline, reverses, even hops over obstacles.

That changes the ceiling.

For years, robot vacuums optimized within a flat-world assumption. Mapping improved. Suction improved. Object avoidance improved. The house itself remained the constraint.

Now the constraint is being confronted in earnest.

Once one brand proves that multi-level mobility is possible, the category baseline shifts.

Consumers will begin to ask a new question: does it handle stairs?

The obvious next step is seamless single- and multi-level navigation as a standard feature. My future grandchildren may struggle to believe we tolerated robots that cleaned only part of a home.

This is how markets move.

A breakthrough does not need to dominate overnight. It needs to reset expectation. When everyone’s expectation shifts, all that came before feels incomplete.

The product has improved.

The definition will next.

What is the equivalent of stairs in your category?

Want to make your product irresistible? That’s what we do as product marketing consultants at Graphos Product, helping innovators turn need-driven ideas into market-ready successes.