Cleaning

Long hair can be a giant pain when it comes to robot vacuums, winding around the main and side brushes until things grind to a halt. Narwal's affordable Freo Pro robovac and mop comprehensively solves this problem with a pair of smart innovations.

What's one of the hardest things about using a hydration pack? Keeping its bladder clean, dry and mold-free between uses! That's where the DRYE device comes in, as it's a battery-powered fan designed specifically to dry hydration pack bladders.

We review Roborock's new wet and dry stick vacuum, the F25 ACE, which delivers a lot of bang for a reasonable amount of bucks. From powerful suction and anti-tangle tech to auto-dispensing detergent and self-cleaning, it ticks many boxes.

Roborock's handsome Flexi Lite claims 17,000 pascals of suction, 40 minutes of battery, a self-cleaning and drying roller-mop, a lay-flat mode for getting under furniture, and right-to-the-edge cleaning on one side. How's it go, then?

This tech has come a long way since the first Roomba in 2002. Now, the latest in iRobot's vacuum-mop range, the Combo 10 Max, has made some noted advances. But will it be enough to convert me – or any other newcomers – to the robot-cleaner life?

Eureka's new flagship robo-cleaner goes to impressive lengths to look after itself, automating as much of its maintenance as possible so you don't need to. We've been living with this plucky robot for a few months now.

From washing urinals to tidying up the beach, we can already see a future where our robot servants help keep our world a little cleaner. Now, a robotic arm has mastered the surprisingly complex task of sink washing, showing off its ability to learn.

A 45-story office tower in New York has become the first in the world to deploy the Ozmo automated window cleaning system, where a platform dangled from the roof is home to robots that spritz the glass 3x faster than human cleaning crews.

Migo Robotics' Ascender is the world's first stair-climbing robotic vacuum cleaner and floor mop. People certainly seem to like the idea, as its just-launched Kickstarter campaign has already racked up almost $2 million in pledges.

A bicycle-towed electric street sweeper may soon be clearing gravel, broken glass, bits of metal and other debris off a bike lane near you. Known as the Bike Lane Sweeper, the device is being trialled at multiple locations in Canada and the US.

Stanford and Google DeepMind researchers have presented an open-source housekeeping robot, and trained it relatively quickly to sauté shrimp, rinse out pans, put pots away in a kitchen cabinet, and clean up wine spills – but it has greater ambitions.

It can really get us down watching as AIs learn to write music, poetry and technology news, but watching this clever autonomous toilet-bot mop up the bogs somehow makes it all worthwhile. It's good to know robots are coming for the crappy jobs too.