Almost as soon as robots entered the public consciousness, we started to imagine robotic assistants, housekeepers, and friends (not to mention a few enemies; T-1000 we're looking at you). There's Gort from "The Day the Earth Stood Still," because even extraterrestrial envoys need a little robotic help, and everyone's favorite protocol droid C-3PO; Rosey the Robot from the animated retrofuture of "The Jetsons" and Sonny from "I, Robot." And then Wall-E, HAL 9000, Marvin the Paranoid Android... the list goes on.

In recent years, household robots have leapt from the page and screen and into the real world. While they don't yet live up to our fictional aspirations, they can be used for common household chores and even a little artificial companionship. Robotic vacuums and mops are perhaps the most common home robots (we'll cover those first), but they are far from the only ones. If you're ready to fill your home with robotic roommates, these are some of the coolest home robots you can find.

Robotic Vacuum Cleaner

The Roomba from iRobot was what introduced a lot of people to modern home robots. It made such a splash when it was introduced in the early 2000s that the name Roomba has become synonymous with robotic vacuum cleaners.

More than two decades later, the Roomba lineup remains a leader in the market with offerings like the Roomba Max 715, Roomba Max 705 Series, or Roomba 105 Vac Robot. You can even couple some of them with an AutoEmpty dock, which holds onto dust and debris until you're ready to dump them out. In addition to vacuums from iRobot, consumers can also choose from options like the Tapo RV30 Max Plus, Dreame X40 Ultra Robotic Vacuum, or the Eufy C10 Robotic vacuum, alongside other robotic vacuums from a variety of brands like Shark, Anker, and Samsung.

Modern robotic vacuums are capable of detecting and avoiding objects, mapping out your home, and returning to the dock automatically when it's time to recharge. They can struggle to get into corners or under low-lying furniture, so they're not likely to do a perfect job, but a robotic vacuum can do most of the legwork, leaving less cleanup for you.

Robotic Mop

Plenty of people still clean their floors the old-fashioned way, by dipping a mop into a bucket of sudsy water and slopping it around the house. This gets the job done, and may be necessary to clean the toughest stains, but it isn't the most time-efficient or the most fun. Fortunately, the future is now. You can choose a different life, one in which a robot mops the floor for you.

There are a variety of robot mops out there which take different tactics to wiping your floors clean. Some simply drag a microfiber towel across the floor after you've put down the cleaning product, while others have reservoirs for water and cleaners. The Braava, from iRobot, can learn the layout of your home, creating its own map. It uses a grid pattern to clean the entire floor, operating by spraying a cleaner and then wiping it up immediately with a pad attached to the bottom. It's sort of like a Swiffer WetJet except it moves around your home on its own.

Competitors like the Deebot from Ecovacs use similar systems to spray cleaner and scrub your floors. Robotic mops are unlikely to do a perfect job but, let's be honest, the same can be said for any of us.

Robotic Window Cleaner

Cleaning windows is not a chore humans usually like doing. Even people who clean for a living often "don't do windows," so it shouldn't be a big surprise that some companies have designed robots to wash windows for us.

Window robots (often called winbots, like the Hobot S7 or the Ecovac Winbot) use sensors to detect window edges and keep themselves in the work zone. They use an onboard motor to create suction and stay attached to the window, but they also typically feature a safety tether to catch them if they lose their grip. Good Housekeeping gave the Hobot S7 an impressive 86 out of 100, when considering characteristics like design, ease of use, and cleaning power.

It's worth noting that many robots clean windows more slowly than a person would, but if you're not the one doing the work, who cares. Other downsides include lackluster performance near the edges and corners along with the need to move plants, curtains, and other things which could become obstacles for a traveling robot. If you've got guests coming over soon or if finishing touches are especially important, you might need to wash the windows the old-fashioned way. Otherwise, a winbot can simplify your cleanup routine significantly.

Companion Robot

In addition to robots that can clean for you, many people are buying miniature robotic friends, a combination of pet and companion. There's ElliQ, a two-part companion comprised of a tablet display hub and a somewhat lifelike robot. While ElliQ doesn't have a face, per se, it is able to represent emotions through a combination of movement and light. It can wake you with weather news, calendar reminders, and other information, first thing in the morning. It can also share messages from family and friends throughout the day.

Meanwhile, Hasbro's robotic cat is a more true-to-life robotic pet designed to look, feel, and sound like a real cat. It purrs when you pet it and can even roll over for belly rubs, which is mostly what ordinary cats do. And if you need to go on vacation or need to leave home for an extended period, confident in the knowledge that the worst you'll come home to is dead batteries.

There's also a trifecta of adorable robotic friends in Emo, Vector, and Aibi. Emo, from Living AI, can make more than 1,000 facial expressions and movements with its digital face, according to its developer. Emo plays music and games, dances, helps operate smart home tech, takes photos, answers questions, and more. Vector and Aibi have similar functionality with some differences in mobility and features.

Lawn Mowing Robot

As soon as we cracked robots that could sweep and mop floors, it was only a matter of time before engineers made one that could mow a lawn. They typically look pretty similar to the Roomba's you're familiar with, but they trade in the spinning arms, rollers, and vacuum suction for spinning blades.

Moreover, while robotic vacuums have the benefit of walls and doors to keep them inside the designated workspace, robotic mowers often rely on digital fences to keep them on track. That could mean a Bluetooth connection or access to a Wi-Fi or cellular network. With the latter, some robotic mowers can cover areas of an acre or more.

The other major difference between robotic vacuums and mowers is the cost. While you can find a good robotic vacuum for a couple hundred dollars, expect to spend considerably more on a robotic lawn mower. Major robotic mower brands like Greenworks, Eufy, and Segway often come with a four figures sticker price.

Pool Cleaning Robot

Swimming in a pool is fun, but cleaning a pool is less fun. Pool-cleaning robots like the Beatbot AquaSense or the Nautilus lineup swim and clean at the same time, so you can focus on fun.

Some cleaners move through your pool at random, turning in another direction when they encounter an obstacle, while others use technologies like camera systems or sonar to learn the layout of your pool. You can also choose between corded models with more power but limited range and cordless models that are typically a little weaker but can move more freely. Some have to be activated manually while others incorporate timers and scheduled cleanings. Costs also vary, ranging from a few hundred dollars to a thousand dollars or more, depending on strength and features.

Generally a favorite among reviewers and pool owners, the Nautilus CC Plus can clean your pool's floor like some sort of bottom-feeding crab, then it can climb the walls to scrub them clean too. It's corded, but it's got a 60-foot power cable, so the range is long enough for your average backyard pool.

Grill Cleaning Robot

Cleaning the grill can be quite a chore, especially if you put it away last summer with barbecue grime still stuck to the grate. If you pulled out the grill for your first summer barbecue only to find it covered in blackened crust, you could soak it in soapy water and scrub it by hand or you could try out the Grillbot Pro and let a machine do the job for you.

The open flame of a barbecue grill is great for cooking your food, but it also bakes bits of food and grease onto the grate. The Grillbot Pro uses a trio of spinning brushes made of nylon, stainless steel, or brass. As it moves around the grill, Grillbot's brushes hit the grate in different directions and at different speeds. A Bluetooth connection lets you control the spray cycle and view any alerts.

Just make sure your grill is cool enough for your robot to operate, under 250 degrees Fahrenheit. Make sure the grill is level and place the robot on the grill with the brushes facing the grate. Set the timer, close the grill lid, and let Grillbot do its thing.

Robotic Litter Box

One of the upsides of a feline companion is that you don't have to let them out to use the bathroom, and they can be litter trained with almost no effort. Of course, the downside of letting an animal poop in your house is that you have to clean up animal waste on a regular basis. To keep your cat happy and healthy (not to mention minimizing odors), you'll be scooping the litter box every day, unless you delegate the job to a robot.

SlashGear's own Chris Burns tested the HomerunPet Self-Cleaning Litter Box and it passed the vibe (and safety) check for the humans and felines in the house. It holds litter in a main litter bit and in a refill reservoir. A set of four weight sensors and an entrance radar constantly monitor for your cat's presence to make sure it doesn't turn on while your cat's inside. And if it were to start up before your cat finished using the facilities, safety bumpers prevent the entrance from being fully blocked, so your cat can escape whenever they want.

Once your cat's done, the main bin rotates, capturing waste and clumped litter before returning clean litter to the main compartment. Finally, waste falls into a bin for collection and disposal. Aside from refilling the litter reservoir and emptying the waste bin every so often, this robot can take litter box cleanup completely off your hands.

Snow Removal Robot

Clearing the driveway of snow is a lot like mowing the lawn, except cold. Most folks who live in snowy places do the job with a shovel, which can be backbreaking work, especially after a heavy snowfall. A snowblower can take some of the difficulty out of the job but you still need to be there, steering the ship, as it were, from start to finish. And then there's the ultimate in snow removal technology: the snow removal robot, like Yarbo.

They operate similarly to robotic vacuums but they lift a much heavier and much colder load, so they tend to be more robust, more complicated, and more expensive. Since a robot like Yarbo doesn't have you to guide it the way a snowblower does, it needs a system of cameras, radar sensors, and other systems to visualize the space, navigate, and avoid obstacles.

Robotic snowblowers are designed to handle ordinary jobs on ordinary driveways but they may run into trouble with more complicated jobs, like removing snow from grassy terrain. It's also worth mentioning that lithium-ion batteries don't operate as well at freezing temperatures, so a battery-heating module is needed to keep it operational when the temperature plummets.

Home Assistant

Astro is a little bit closer to what you might picture when you close your eyes and imagine a home assistant robot. It's an approximation, a technological first draft of robots like Rosie from "The Jetsons" or Sonny from "I, Robot" — the kind who can move through your home, interacting with people and completing tasks.

Amazon's Astro is a robotic helper with a large wheel on either side of its body and a smaller one in the back. At the front, you'll find a tablet-style display which shows you the robot's expression and relays calls, texts, and other alerts. You can even ask Astro to go find someone in your home, and they'll seek them out for you. It's essentially a version of Amazon's Alexa on a wheeled, mobile platform. It can move through your house at about a meter per second (roughly 2.2 miles per hour) and it has a telescoping camera at the front so it can change its vantage point as needed.

Here's the bad news: Even now, roughly five years after Astro was introduced, Astro is still only available as a "Day 1 Edition," meaning an unfinished product which may have some issues when the robotic rubber meets the road. Astro is only available by invitation, which you can request, but Amazon states that not all requests are granted. Getting your hands on Astro will take a little bit of luck and patience.

Laundry Folding Robot

For decades, we've had machines for cleaning and drying our clothes, but sorting and folding has remained a purely human job. Tumbling is good for washing and drying, but folding clothes takes more finesse. It's only recently that the field of robotics has become advanced enough to tackle folding laundry in a consumer product.

Laundroid was one of the first laundry-folding robots, ostensibly capable of washing, drying, ironing, sorting, and folding your clothes. It could do it all, but it did it pretty slowly; It could take up to 10 minutes to handle a single piece of clothing, making a load of laundry an all-day affair. Sadly, the company folded before it could bring a finalized robot to market.

More recently, LG demonstrated its own laundry-folding robot, CLOiD, at the 2026 CES (Consumer Electronics Show). While Laundry looked like (and effectively was) a robotic closet, CLOiD looks like an actual robot, at least from the waist up. Unfortunately, CLOiD isn't yet available, even after a successful (if slow) showing at CES. Meanwhile, Weave Robotics' Isaac 0 has a similar design (if a little less cute) and you can order one right now, provided you live in California.

Compost Robot

Food waste is a significant problem and composting is one of the most popular solutions. A properly managed compost pile can transform your eggshells, potato peels, and other food scraps into so-called black gold, a nutrient-rich dirt which you can add to other soils for home gardening, house plants, and more. Usually, you need a municipal composting program or a yard and a decent amount of space to compost properly, and that's if your HOA or other housing authority even allows it.

For those of you who can't set up a pile or a worm bin in the backyard, composting robots claim to offer a technological alternative. One of the most popular options is the Lomi, which doesn't actually compost in the traditional sense, as there's no real microbial activity to actually decompose your food scraps. Instead, it dehydrates and grinds your scraps to reduce the volume and the smell. The finished product might be more convenient, but you can't use it like ordinary compost.

If you want a more authentic composting experience, the Reencle might be more your speed. It uses microbial colonies to jumpstart the decomposition process and keeps its interior at a toasting 131 to 140 degrees Fahrenheit, to keep the microbes happy. With a couple extra steps (sifting and curing) you'll end up with something more comparable to conventional compost.

Source:SlashGear News