Roborock’s Saros rover is here to conquer your stairs—finally

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Roborock is finally answering the “but will it clean my stairs?” question with the new Saros Rover, a robot vacuum that doesn’t just avoid stairs — it climbs them.

Shown off at CES 2026, the Saros Rover uses a wild articulating wheel-and-leg system that lets it tackle a full staircase, clean each step, and move between floors without human babysitting.

In a live demo, the Rover’s movement looked more like a mechanical frog than a Roomba, with each leg able to lift, lower, and pivot independently.

It can do small jumps, quickly change direction, and glide more smoothly than the typical bump-and-scoot bots most folks have at home.

For stair cleaning, it hoists its body up, settles onto the step, then pivots on one leg to vacuum along the tread before moving to the next.

The whole process is still slow and a bit nerve-wracking: it took just under three minutes for the Saros Rover to climb five steps, and there were a few sketchy moments where it looked like it might tumble backward.

It stayed upright, though, which is more than you can say for most standard robot vacuums that treat stairs like a cliff in a platformer.

Corners and edge dust bunnies will likely still be a challenge, but as a proof of concept, this is a big leap for robo-cleaners.

Roborock also showed the Saros handling slopes, rolling down with control and using its motor system to brake, stop, turn around, and even reverse back up an incline.

It’s not the all-purpose home robot butler sci-fi keeps promising, yet for anyone with multiple floors and a hatred of lugging a vacuum up the stairs, it’s a glimpse of where home cleaning bots are headed next.

Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com.