Sunday Robotics has a new way to train robots to do common household tasks. The startup plans to put its fully autonomous robots in homes next year. Memo may not be the world's fastest barista, but it is impressive--for a robot. I recently watched as Memo, a new home robot from a company called Sunday Robotics, made coffee in an open-plan kitchen in Mountain View, California. Memo looks like something out of Wall-E, with a gleaming white body, two arms, a friendly cartoonish face, and a red baseball cap.

CES is known for splashy TV and laptop launches, but in 2025, there were more than a few companies trying to make waves with robot vacuums, too. After years where it seemed like vacuuming, mopping, and self-emptying might be the peak of a robot vacuum's abilities, this year's show introduced home robots with whole new functionality -- and appendages. Here's the robot vacuums that caught our eye at CES 2025, many of which you could invite to clean your living room later this year. Roborock's flagship vacuum for 2025 is the Roborock Saros Z70, a circular robot vacuum on the outside, that hides a retractable "OmniGrip" arm that can pick up and move objects on the inside. The arm is capable of five axis movement and is only able to carry around 300 grams, which makes it better at moving clothes and cables than anything truly heavy.

On March 18, 2024, NVIDIA unveiled Project GR00T, a general-purpose multimodal generative AI model designed specifically for training humanoid robots. Preceding this event, Tesla's unveiling of the Optimus Gen 2 humanoid robot on December 12, 2023, underscored the profound impact robotics is poised to have on reshaping various facets of our daily lives. While robots have long dominated industrial settings, their presence within our homes is a burgeoning phenomenon. This can be attributed, in part, to the complexities of domestic environments and the challenges of creating robots that can seamlessly integrate into our daily routines.

Jeff Bezos has wanted a home robot for a long time. By 2017, Amazon's founder, an avid sci-fi fan, had repeatedly asked the company's engineers and executives about the feasibility of such a project, says Ken Kiraly, a vice president who helped create the Kindle ebook reader. That was the year Amazon's special projects team judged that it was finally the right time to begin building a home robot, due to the maturity of artificial intelligence and robotics, falling cost of sensors and computer chips, and risk that competitors had similar plans. They got started despite one big unknown: what Amazon's home robot would be good for. "Robots are hard," says Kiraly, who put together the team on the project.

After decades of creating war machines and home cleaning appliances, iRobot agreed to be acquired by Amazon for $1.7 billion, according to a joint statement by the two companies. If the deal goes through, it would give Amazon access to yet another wellspring of personal data: interior maps of Roomba owners' homes. Those Roombas work in part by using sensors to map the homes they operate in. In a 2017 Reuters interview, iRobot CEO Colin Angle suggested the company might someday share that data with tech companies developing smart home devices and AI assistants. Amazon declined to respond to questions about how it would use that data, but combined with other recent acquisition targets, the company could wind up with a comprehensive look at what's happening inside people's homes.

For ages, AI has always been portrayed as the antagonist in pop culture and movies, be it the iconic HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Auto in Wall-E, T-1000 in the Terminator series, or Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. But is this the future of AI that we are really heading towards? Will every AI program become sentient, self-aware, go rogue, and cause massive destruction? The future of AI brings endless possibilities and applications that will help simplify our lives to a great extent. It will help shape the future and destiny of humanity positively. So, how will the future of AI affect humans?

Amazon's household robot is exactly what I expected, but it's not what I wanted and it definitely isn't what anyone asked for. Instead of a multitasking mimicry of me that can empty the dishwasher, pick up my kids' shoes, feed the dog, and clean the house, Amazon's first attempt at a home bot is simply a souped-up Echo Show on wheels. It also has two cameras that it uses to find people and places in your home to deliver items, reminders, or timers. It can act as a security guard and patrol your home when paired with a Ring subscription, and it can fart and burp. In short, the Astro does everything Amazon's smart home products and services already do -- only on wheels. But the Astro is a robot. And that part is really cool.

Robots are hard, and in a lot of ways home robots are doubly so. That no one has managed to crack the code beyond the wild success of robotic vacuums like the Roomba is not for lack of trying. To date, it's largely been the realm of startups like Anki and Jibo (or the rare exception of the Bosch-created Kuri), but today, Amazon announced that it's throwing its own tremendous resources behind the problem. The company just announced its first robot, Astro. The product is taking its first baby steps to market as part of Amazon's Day One Edition program.

Amazon unveiled a long-awaited home robot on Tuesday, and he may or may not be a good boy. Like an extremely advanced puppy, "Astro" is designed to move around the home and assist its owner with small tasks like checking whether the stove is on, playing music, and delivering drinks. The robot can also recognize the faces of certain people and is equipped with a periscope camera that it can raise to get a better view of its surroundings. Amazon says that it will be available sometime later this year on an invite-only basis for $999. Astro is about 20 pounds and two feet tall, about the size of a small dog.

On Tuesday, Amazon announced Astro, a home robot the company says can help owners keep up with tasks such as home monitoring or keeping in touch with family and friends. "One of the things I love about working at Amazon is inventing the future, and I've spent a lot of time since that day on a team that's imagining how robots can help customers in new ways at home," said Charlie Tritschler, vice president of products at Amazon in a blog post. It's available by invite only for $999.99. Astro takes advantage of both Alexa and Ring, its line of home security offerings. The robot can be set to autonomously roam around your home to check for safety.