Home robots: what's out there beyond the vacuum cleaner

What a home robot is

A home robot is a machine that does a job at home with some autonomy: it decides something for itself, even if it's only which way to mop — which is why they're also called smart robots or AI robots. What separates a robot from an appliance is exactly that: you don't have to hold its hand. And what separates one home robot from another is what job they do: some look after the house, and others, the newest ones, look after whoever lives in it.

The cleaning ones: the veterans

They started it all. The robot vacuum has been in homes for twenty years and is now a mature product: it maps the house, mops, empties itself. It's joined by the window-cleaning robot and the autonomous mop. They do one concrete task and do it well; they cost from around €150 to over €1,000.

Their limit is their virtue: they expect nothing of you and you nothing of them. Nobody tells the vacuum about their day.

The kitchen, garden and security ones

The kitchen robot (a processor with guided recipes) is half a robot: it chops, kneads and cooks at controlled temperature, but with someone's hands beside it. The robot mower is the vacuum of the garden: you mark the area and it fends for itself. And cameras and wheeled patrols watch the empty house. They all share a pattern: one task, one device.

The companion ones: the job is the person

The new category doesn't do tasks: it does company. A companion robot converses by voice, remembers what you tell it, reminds of medication and appointments, plays music, calls the family. Its measure of success isn't a "clean floor" but a less silent house.

Within this family there's everything: robot pets that respond to strokes (EMO, Eilik, Loona…), desktop social robots, assistants with screens. The difference between them is in the conversation — whether they understand natural language or only set phrases — and in the memory: whether tomorrow they remember what you told them today. Our Paco is in this category: you can see everything it does, feature by feature, and who makes it in our story.

What's still science fiction (for now)

The humanoid butler that irons, cooks and carries up the shopping doesn't exist at home prices, however many spectacular videos go round. Humanoid lab prototypes cost as much as a flat, and the demos are usually teleoperated or filmed in prepared settings. Any home robot on sale today does one well-defined job — and anyone who promises you otherwise is selling you the brochure, not the robot.

That's why we prefer to tell you what Paco does today, tested and in writing, and nothing more. It's the house rule: the website promises nothing the product doesn't do.

Which one makes sense in your home?

It depends what's missing. If time is missing, a cleaning robot is money well spent. If what's missing is someone keeping an eye out — on the medication, the appointments, the spirits of someone who spends many hours alone — what's missing isn't a task but company, and that's where a companion robot comes in. We write about it, with devices and without, in companionship for older adults: what really helps.