People who hate housework will soon have two more robots to handle the chores. At 3.5 inches high and 6.5 inches wide, the 230 is geared to squeeze into tight places, such as underneath furniture and around bathroom fixtures. The 230 holds enough cleaning fluid to take care of 150 square feet of space in one session, iRobot said. The Scooba will also incorporate iRobot's Virtual Wall technology, which sends out a beam the device won't cross, ensuring that it doesn't stray out of its assigned cleaning area. The Roomba 700 series is the sixth generation of the robot cleaner, according to iRobot, and has been designed to vacuum up smaller, finer particles.

It's the 21st century, and robots are supposed to be doing everything for us now. As with personal jet packs, that hasn't happened. But Evolution Robotics' Mint is one of a number of floor-cleaning robots designed to lighten the housework load. Announced at CES earlier this year and shipping this fall, Mint is an automatic floor cleaner--not a vacuum like iRobot's Roomba. You put a wet or dry dust cloth on the removable cleaning pad, push a button, and Mint gets to work.

The Bedford, Mass.-based company, which has sold millions of its disc-shaped Roomba vacuums, is expanding its family of cleaning automatons. The new robot is the Braava jet, a small, shiny white robotic mop designed to clean hard floors, especially in bathrooms and kitchens. And did we say it's square? But perhaps the biggest surprise about the Braava jet is not its shape; it's the price: US 200. This is iRobot's most affordable cleaning bot ever.