Consumer Robotics Show – TechCrunch

CES has always been a weird show for robotics. It's true the organization behind the show dropped the name "Consumer Electronics Show" some number of years ago (a fact it continues to be very insistent about in its press materials), but at its heart the show is still very much about consumer technologies. For robotics, consumer has been an exceedingly difficult nut to crack, for reasons of pricing, scalability and the general unpredictability of operating in uncontrolled environments. In much the same way that the robotic vacuum has long been the main exception to that rule, robotic vacuums have been the one consistent feature at the show over the past decade-plus. Back in 2020 (the last time TechCrunch attended the show in person), I wrote a piece titled, "Companies take baby steps toward home robots at CES." Fittingly (for reasons that will be made clear below), the first person I quoted in the piece was Labrador Systems co-founder/CEO Mike Dooley, who told me, "I think there are fewer fake robots this year."