The World’s First Carpet-Washing Modular Robot Vacuum Might Come From an Unknown Startup I Saw at CES

6 days ago 17

Robot vacuums can clean carpets with suction, and many of them can also mop hard flooring. But no robot vacuum is capable of wet cleaning carpets the way a carpet cleaner is, due to the complications of needing specialized brushes and cleaning solutions.

The Robotin R2, a product from a startup, is attempting to solve this problem, and the solution is remarkably straightforward in its simplicity. Just replace the entire front of the robot vacuum with a new modular attachment.

I watched the Robotin R2 at CES 2026 as it successfully washed a small strip of carpet. I even touched the panel to verify. The company said the units are currently in trial production after a successful Kickstarter campaign. Early backers are expected to receive their units between March and April 2026. Mass production for general consumer release is expected to occur between April and June 2026.

The robot consists of a core robot unit and two modules: a deep vacuum module for regular suction on various flooring types, and a carpet wash and dry module specifically for cleaning carpets.

The base station is also massive, featuring an auto-empty dustbin, a 2.4-gallon clean water tank and a 1.6-gallon dirty water tank that also recycles the water. The entire unit measures 31.73 inches in height, 18.46 inches in width and 25.33 inches in length. That makes it about as big and bulky as a portable air conditioner, so it’ll take up a lot of space and probably isn’t practical in a smaller apartment.

Replacing one module with another seemed relatively simple. I watched one of the staff members at the booth do it by simply slotting one in and out. I was also able to give it a try myself and found it relatively easy to use.

The carpet washing section uses a mixture of water and cleaning solution; however, for the purposes of the demo, they were only using water, as I was able to confirm by touching it that it was indeed wet. It can clean a carpet of up to 400 square feet in about an hour, using water and suction.

Jimson Zhu, partner and vice president of product, informed me that it should take approximately 60 minutes to clean the space and around 2 hours to dry, which isn’t bad considering how long shampooing your carpet and then waiting for it to dry can take.

After washing, the drying process begins, which involves circulating hot air heated to 110 degrees Fahrenheit. There are humidity sensors to monitor moisture levels and the drying process. Robotin says it has a dozen sensors and AI navigation for its cleaning and mapping, along with an app. For regular mopping of hard floors, it has hot water mopping up to 140 degrees Fahrenheit and hot air drying.

The company says that this process occurs largely without manual intervention. After seeing it in action, I can confirm that it’s at least functional. It was able to successfully navigate the narrow square of carpet on the table without falling off the edge.

It supports app control and features mapping, including cliff detection, obstacle avoidance and lidar navigation. It can also climb thresholds up to 2 centimeters, which is an increasingly standard feature these days and isn’t particularly impressive next to robot vacuums like the Dreame X50 Ultra, which can climb thresholds 2 inches and higher, let alone the leg-equipped Saros Rover.

That said, as a vacuum, it sounds fairly capable on paper, with 115 air watts of suction and an anti-tangle brush. The docking station features a 2-liter dustbin, which should allow you to go up to two months without needing to be emptied.

Zhu also informed me that in the future, Robotin plans to introduce additional modules, including a robot arm module that resembles the Roborock Saros Z70, allowing it to pick up items around your home. Presumably, additional attachments can be added, and potentially even performance upgrades.

This is a unique robot vacuum that I’m certainly looking forward to trying down the road.

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