Many are the hazards faced by the robot vacuum: strands of hair, walls, couches, curious pets, insurmountable obstacles your toddler might have left in its path. Over the years, robot vacuums have improved enough to deal with most of these, but Roborock just took the next leap forward with the Saros Z70. Only months ago, we saw Roborock make a robot vacuum that can lift itself up over obstacles — now, they’ve got one with a robotic arm that can grab those obstacles and move them out of the way.
The Roborock Saros Z70 looks like your standard disc-shaped robot vacuum at first glance, until the OmniGrip gets put to use. The OmniGrip is a robotic arm that can extend up out of the robot to grab obstacles that the vacuum’s sensors detect. The arm is equipped with its own LED light, camera, and pressure sensor, allowing it to lock onto an object, confirm that it’s light enough for the arm to lift, and then lift it out of the way.
For now, the Saros Z70 can only detect and move socks, tissues, small towels, and light sandals (think flip-flops), but Roborock is working on expanding that list. Here’s hoping Lego bricks are on the roadmap!
Thanks to advanced mapping, the Saros Z70 does a comprehensive cleaning job. With the robot arm activated, the Saros Z70 will use the map of your house that it’s created from previous runs to do an initial vacuuming run, detecting obstacles as it goes. Once it’s done with the first pass, the vacuum will backtrack to obstacles, move them out of the way, and clean the spots it missed before heading back to the docking station.
So, where do the obstacles go? It’s up to you. Once the vacuum has built a map of your place, you can designate a zone for the vacuum to dump the obstacles it finds, so you can scoop up all that stuff at once.
The same cameras and lasers used for mapping can also help the vacuum detect cables and irregularly shaped walls, to prevent sucked up loose cables or scratches on the walls. Additional side brushes can drop down to help prevent hair from getting tangled in the vacuum, too — all the natural enemies of the robot vacuum are accounted for.
Like many other robot vacuums, the Saros Z70 doubles as a mop. It can be sent to mop out hard floors, and when it’s done, the docking station can clean the mop without you needing to do anything (besides refill and replace the water). In fact, the vacuum can even tell the dock to clean the mop if it recognizes that it’s just mopped the bathroom or kitchen.
Speaking of the app, there’s a lot of features there to make the vacuum even smarter. If you don’t want to risk your carpet getting damp, you can tell the vacuum to leave the mop behind when it goes on a vacuum run, then re-equip it when it’s ready to head to the hard floors. You can also set quiet hours — the vacuum will lower suction power to make less noise if it does a cleaning run during those times.
Since it has a camera for mapping and obstacle detection anyway, the Saros Z70 can also double as a pet monitor. Using the app remotely, you can check in on and talk to your pets. If you’re really concerned that the dogs are making a mess for your vacuum to clean up later, you can tell the vacuum to drop everything and go find those dogs ASAP.
At the CES 2025 electronics trade show in Las Vegas, Roborock also introduced two other robot vacuums, the Saros 10 and Saros 10R. No robot arm for either, but both vacuums do have the same small, nimble size as the Saros Z70, at just a little over 3 inches tall. They also have the same improved scanning and mapping technology, so they’ll be just as good at detecting obstacles – they just won’t be able to pick them up. The Saros 10 also has a retractable sensor module that can reduce its height further, allowing it to sneak under couches and beds.
All three robot vacuums should hit the market sometime in the first half of this year, but Roborock hasn’t announced exact release dates or prices as of publication.