Roborock Just Made the Circular Robot Vacuum Look Like a Relic

LAS VEGAS — The "hockey puck" era of home automation may have just met its end at CES 2026. Roborock took the floor today not with a faster brush or a bigger dustbin, but with something that looks more like a lunar explorer than a household appliance. The Saros Rover, the company’s new flagship, ditches traditional wheels for a set of articulated legs, effectively declaring war on the door thresholds and high-pile rugs that have defeated robot vacuums for nearly twenty years.

Ditching the Wheels for Mechanical Limbs

Walking through the Roborock booth, the visual shift is jarring. While the industry has spent a decade refining the circular disc, the Saros Rover hoists itself up on four limbs to navigate the showroom floor. It doesn't just roll; it clambers. Watching a vacuum stride over a stray shoe or hoist its chassis to clear a two-inch transition is a departure from the "stuck" notifications users have come to expect.

The most striking—and perhaps slightly unsettling—feature is its ability to balance on two legs. By shifting its center of gravity, the Rover can stand tall to reach higher surfaces or compress its frame to shimmy into tight vertical gaps. It’s a feat of engineering that borders on the "uncanny valley" of home appliances; there is something distinctly biological about the way it adjusts its stance to find stability.

Solving the Threshold Problem

For years, LiDAR and AI-driven mapping have been the brains of the industry, but the "body" has remained a physical bottleneck. The Saros Rover addresses the architectural "last mile" that wheeled units simply cannot bridge:

• Active Obstacle Scaling: Rather than performing a frustrated U-turn at the sight of a thick rug, the Rover steps onto it.
• Variable Height Cleaning: The legs allow the suction intake to maintain optimal floor contact on uneven terrain, or rise up to scan a room from a higher vantage point.
• Vertical Mobility: The mechanical shift suggests a future where robots aren't just floor-bound, but capable of interacting with the home at different elevations.

The Engineering Trade-off: At What Cost?

However, this mechanical leap brings a heavy dose of skepticism from the tech community. Replacing two simple wheels with a complex array of servos and joints introduces a litany of potential failure points. More moving parts generally mean more frequent trips to the repair shop.

Furthermore, the energy required to power a walking locomotion system is significantly higher than a rolling one. Roborock remained tight-lipped during the January 6 opening briefing regarding specific battery life and the "sticker shock" price point surely attached to such hardware. Consumers will have to decide if the ability to climb over a door frame is worth the likely hit to runtime and the inevitable premium MSRP.

A New Aesthetic for the Smart Home

The Saros Rover marks a pivot away from the "invisible" robot that hides under the couch. This is a visible, active presence in the home. Whether consumers are ready for a vacuum that "walks" past them in the hallway remains to be seen.

As CES 2026 kicks off, Roborock has successfully forced its competitors to look beyond software. The question is no longer how smart the vacuum’s brain is, but whether the traditional wheel-and-brush architecture is simply too primitive for the modern, multi-textured home.