Ollie Q hacked a Roomba so people anywhere can drive it in real time through a web interface. A low-latency video feed lets remote players steer around the room and compete to see who can clean most effectively.
A Raspberry Pi and custom software keep the controls responsive, and Ollie even experimented with a racing-wheel controller. A machine designed to automate housework is deliberately turned back into a human-controlled activity—just with the humans moved onto the internet.
The final form of “gamifying chores” is apparently letting strangers on the internet drive your vacuum cleaner. An unusual direction for outsourcing housework.
Robot vacuums work well on flat floors, but stairs stop them completely. Saros Rover tackles that problem with wheel assemblies that extend like legs, letting the machine lift itself one step at a time. It was demonstrated at IFA 2026.
The robot carefully raises its body onto each tread and cleans as it goes, taking about three minutes in the demonstration. Rather than being carried upstairs by another device, the vacuum itself performs the climb.
Instead of giving the vacuum a ride upstairs, they gave the vacuum legs. That's a very demanding version of independence.
Larger robot vacuums can struggle to fit beneath furniture and into other tight spaces. Roomba Duo tackles that problem with a large cleaning robot that carries a smaller companion robot and lowers it to the floor using a mechanical arm on top. iRobot presented the two-robot system as a concept at IFA 2026.
The main unit handles regular vacuuming and mopping, while the roughly 8.35 cm-tall companion can enter places the larger robot cannot. Both share the same home map, dividing the job between two machines of different sizes.
Robot vacuums now have something like parent-and-child roles. The appliance is starting to look more like a tiny team.
The final form of “gamifying chores” is apparently letting strangers on the internet drive your vacuum cleaner. An unusual direction for outsourcing housework.