We Spent Hours Watching a Robot Vacuum Pick Up Socks. It’s a Dream Come True

Envision a robot vacuum cleaner. Now envision a mechanical arm extending in front of it to pick up a sock that someone peeled off and tossed to the ground. And now imagine this same robot vacuum cleaner picking up a bunch of discarded items and neatly arranging them, while cleaning your floor. That’s the Roborock Saros Z70, a new robot vacuum we spent hours making pick up (clean!) socks to demonstrate an innovative feature in the world of mechanized cleaning. It’s a first. And it’s a dream come true.

In a Las Vegas hotel room at CES 2025, and even before that in a small demo in New York for journalists, we watched the Roborock Saros Z70 size up sock after sock, pinching with a mechanical arm. It was so much fun to watch, we made the robot vacuum clean up the same few socks over and over and over again. If the robots ever decide to rise up, we hope they’ll forgive us.

The Roborock Saros Z70 is the first mass-market robot vacuum with a mechanical arm designed to pick up and move larger debris while it cleans. At the preview event in New York before CES and at the trade show, we noticed that the Saros’s arm might not always pick up an item on the first try, and the number of objects it can manipulate is pretty small for now. But the technology shows potential to go far beyond just socks. The five-axis robotic arm, called OmniGrip, can pick up things that weigh as much as 300 grams — about 10.5 ounces — and can deposit them in designated areas where you tell them to.

The Saros Z70 isn’t on the market just yet, although Roborock told us they expect it to be available sometime in the first half of the year. The price also isn’t available yet, but high-end robot vacuums routinely run $1,500 or more. Here’s what we saw in the hours we spent watching this little robot.

A glitchy start gave way to an impressive display

In its debut on stage at the Soho House members’ club in downtown Manhattan before CES, Roborock’s Saros Z70 prototype initially refused to emerge from its chamber (who among us hasn’t suffered stage fright?), a mechanical glitch we are assured has been remedied for the retail version. 

After a few false starts, the arm was set free from its onboard cabin, at which time the slender circular vac approached a crumpled sock, sending its arm twisting out and down to capture it, much like those infernal claw machine games found in arcades. 

Once it got going, the robot arm picked up several socks. It dropped the occasional pickup but didn’t give up until it had it in its clutches, and then dutifully carried each one to a single area on the stage designated by a brand rep through the mobile app. A rep from the company told us the current version is better at recognizing black socks than white ones.

While the demo was mostly controlled, the final version of the vac will seek out and remove debris on its own during regular cleaning cycles. During an initial sweep, the Saros Z70 should carry out normal duties but also detect and mark objects it can lift. In theory, it will then circle back to items such as socks, tissues and small towels to tidy up during a second round of cleaning. 

The Saros Z70 is able to detect up to 108 different obstacles. While the list of objects OmniGrip can actually lift is far smaller, more items will be supported in future software upgrades, according to Roborock’s official release. Those who buy the first-gen model can expect remote improvements to the OmniGrip without having to shell out more dough.

It already recognizes more than socks

In Las Vegas, we spent more than an hour with the robot as it picked up socks in a hotel room. One caveat is that the vacuum was following a fairly prescribed routine — it would go in a straight line, pick up a sock set off to the side of its track, then proceed a few feet to drop it in a basket and return, along that straight line, to its base. Roborock said this program, designed for demonstration, kept it from following its usual routine, which would include starting to map the room. Rather than stand there while the robot vacuum meandered its way around a suite in The Venetian, it kept to a tight schedule.

That doesn’t mean we didn’t get to see the machine try to problem solve. A company representative told us what types of items it had been programmed to pick up — socks, small towels, small pieces of paper and sandals. We threw down a wool beanie hat, which is basically a sock. The Roborock had no trouble identifying it and picking it up.

It was fascinating watching the vacuum figure out how to pick something up. Sometimes it would drive past the sock it was supposed to pick up, and we would all sigh in disappointment that it was going to fail. But then it would rotate and look behind it, and pick up the sock successfully.

Not every run was a success. Sometimes it tried to grab an object and it slipped out of its grip. At other times, it seemed to rebel against being a trade show prototype, spontaneously deciding to start mapping the room. 

A robot vacuum with more to learn

While the list of objects the vacuum can identify is relatively small, Roborock plans to add more as it develops the software intelligence to do so. Future updates might include an ability to pick up cat toys or shoes and put them where they’re supposed to go. The smarter it gets with the mechanical arm, the more you can envision a robot vacuum that can truly clean a messy, dirty floor with little prep.

It shouldn’t grab your kid or cat by accident 

If you’re worried about the arm grabbing an innocent cat or a tuft of a toddler’s hair, Roborock says the arm’s grip isn’t strong enough to do any harm. Just in case, the vac includes a child lock and safety stop button, allowing for immediate shutdown in any scenario. 

There are also pet-friendly features that allows you to check in on your animals, capture snapshots and schedule on-demand cruises. The vac moves aside when approaching pets to avoid frightening them.

New advanced object recognition 

While the grabbing arm gets most of the glory, none of its performance would be possible without precision sensors, a camera and an LED light fixed to the robot’s slim frame, all of which are controlled by Roborock’s next-gen StarSight navigation and object recognition system. 

“Instead of using a traditional LDS (lidar) tower module for navigation, the system integrates next-gen dual-light 3D time-of-flight  sensors and RGB cameras powered by AI to determine its position, surroundings and whether the object it grips is overweight,” Roborock said in a statement.

Arm aside, this is shaping up to be a top-tier robot vacuum

In addition to its flashy new appendage, the Roborock Saros Z70 has the robovac basics down. It features 22,000 Pa of suction power, paired with a dual anti-tangle system, which deploys itself to prevent hair from tangling around the vacuum. The machine’s dual-spinning mops can lift up to 2.2 centimeters (just under an inch), allowing for increased air circulation and faster drying and prevents the vac from dragging dirt across clean surfaces. All of this comes inside one of the slimmest robot vacuums on the market at just 7.98cm (3.14 inches) high.