Robot vacuums have been a mainstay of apartment accommodation for the better part of a decade. Owners simply set them off and let them automatically suck up particles from the floor, even if they are in hard-to-reach places (like underneath sideboards and desks).
However, these devices always had a practical limitation in homes with more than two floors. You either had to carry them upstairs, or buy one for each space, creating expense and hassle.
And what about the stairs themselves? Vacuuming them with a robot was impossible, so homeowners had to keep a full-sized vacuum in the cupboard, which wasn’t ideal in places offering limited space.
Now, though, a revolution is afoot and the retail landscape is changing. Various companies are experimenting with stair-climbing vacuum robots that can clean and mop the floor anywhere in the home, cutting out all the hassle.
What’s more, the technology is surprisingly simple, making many manufacturers wonder why they didn’t try it before. The general shape of the vacuums is roughly the same, just with two extendable and opposable arms that reach out from the bot and firmly plant themselves on the next rung.
“Companies are entering the space left, right and center,” says Vacuum Wars, a site that reviews the latest vacuums to hit the market. “Firms know that it is a critical step on the path to fully functional household robot assistants who can do all the chores people want to avoid. The main challenge is creating the servo and motor systems, and developing a solution that will enable robot vacuums to hoist themselves onto the next rung of stairs without toppling over or falling back down. But giving them opposable and multi-functional limbs is taking over the industry, and it seems to be relatively cost-effective.”
Migo Robotics is a company behind the movement and the inventor of the world’s first stair-climbing robot. It sees the innovation as essential for expanding the market and making robot vacuums more universally applicable.
What’s interesting is that the device features many of the technologies found in other robots, like self-driving cars. It has HD cameras, LiDAR sensors, “time-of-flight” sensors and an onboard AI computing engine to crunch the numbers and ensure the robot remains on the proper path.
The system is a little fiddly in the sense that it requires time to make a map of the home (or owners can manually enter it). But once it defines the space, it will remember it forever, allowing it to navigate indefinitely. If a new piece of furniture appears, it can navigate around or underneath it without coming to a halt or getting stuck.
Migo’s device ascends stars automatically when it encounters them (and can tell the difference between stairs and other high-sided objects in the home). The machine climbs by raising its central body relative to its outrigger wheels, lifting the main chassis before sliding it onto the stairs above. This process repeats until it completes the flight of stairs and reaches the next floor.
The system goes into reverse on the way down. The outrigger wheels extend to the stair rung below before the body slides from its existing ledge and then lowers on stilts to the next level before repeating the process.
“Getting a robot to perform these actions in a practical way has been the dream of manufacturers for a long time,” says Vacuum Wars. “But the technology was always out of reach. Building the robot arms was possible, but getting them to activate in the right places across different living situations was the challenging part. Machines had to understand the context, similar to a person or animal. What Migo is doing is changing that with AI. Systems can interpret inputs from their sensors and use them to figure out the next course of action, including whether to climb or descend stairs, which is remarkable, and only something that became possible in recent years.”
Migo’s implementation of AI extends considerably beyond its stair-climbing or descending abilities. It also determines the methods the robot will use to clean the floor. If it detects carpet, it will activate the vacuum, but if it thinks it is traveling over any other kind of surface, it will use the mop function.The concept here is to reduce the effort required by human owners and increase autonomy even further. Migo says its robot doesn’t require any input once set off and is controllable via a companion app to set cleaning schedules throughout the week. The device will then do its job.
“Migo isn’t the only robot vacuum on the market, and it is expensive,” Vacuum Wars explains. “But it represents that exciting era we are moving into in the industry. As technologies from the AI chatbot and driverless car industries become mainstream, it is boosting the sector and making the technology more capable, similar to recent advances in chip, camera, and software design that made smartphones possible fifteen years ago.”
Migo isn’t the only company exploring the idea of a stair-climbing robot. Another brand, Roborock, also believes that the era of stair-climbing robots is just around the corner. It doesn’t have a product available yet but is also investing in more autonomy to make the user experience pleasant.
For instance, it recently introduced a new dock that automatically cleans hair from its Qrevo Curv device, eliminating the dirty and annoying job for homeowners. This innovation is similar to one planned by Shark, a Chinese company making waves in the industry.
It isn’t yet clear what the next step after stair-climbing robot vacuums will be. It is likely devices will continue to evolve to become more humanoid, giving them even more capabilities, including the capacity to vacuum thin dusty surfaces, like dado rails that current machines can’t touch. Companies like Boston Dynamics seem to suggest that these capabilities aren’t far off, but as of 2024, it isn’t entirely clear where the technological situation stands.
There’s also the consumer question of whether these devices are needed. Only time will tell.
