China Sets First Industry Standard for Window-Cleaning Robots

The standard, titled Household and Similar Window-Cleaning Robots, was led by the China Household Electric Appliance Research Institute. Ecovacs was one of the whole-machine companies involved in drafting it, along with Shanxi Jiashida, Beijing Hete and several testing institutions, according to the report. It covers operation protection, cleaning performance, test methods, inspection rules, marking and instructions, and defines scenarios including vertical flat glass, glass with glued frames, glass with unglued frames and frameless glass. It also defines safety devices, cleanliness and cleaning cycles, and sets minimum thresholds: overall cleanliness no lower than 70%, edge and corner cleanliness no lower than 65%, and operational durability no lower than 200 hours.

The standard arrives as the niche product scales. IDC data cited by Leiphone showed global window-cleaning robot shipments reached about 847,000 units in the second quarter of 2026, up 59.8% year on year, compared with 21.5% growth for the overall home-cleaning robot market in the same period. AVC data showed China's market grew from 480 million yuan in 2020 to 1.7 billion yuan in 2025, a compound annual growth rate of 28.6%. Global shipments were about 2.373 million units in 2025, up 70.4%, and the industry expects more than 3 million units in 2026. Ecovacs' monthly capacity for its Windowba line moved from tens of thousands of units to the 200,000-unit level after volumes rose in 2025, Leiphone reported, citing Cailian Press.

Window cleaning is low-frequency but necessary and risky, and the product's first value is moving people away from danger, according to the report. In practice, users still need to attach safety ropes, check glass conditions and supervise operation. Long-term tests by overseas review institutions showed that such products can handle floating dust and routine maintenance but have limited ability on stubborn stains, and most scenarios still require people to place, move and watch the machine, Leiphone reported. Edge blind spots, stubborn stains and the need for human supervision remain common shortcomings across brands.

Li Xiaohua, director of Ecovacs' Windowba product line, described an internal debate at a briefing. An early view held that a machine that occasionally got stuck in one window but covered 95% of scenarios should still basically meet user needs. Home visits overturned that view. In one user's home, a large floor-to-ceiling window made the robot get stuck in a distant corner every time. The user chose not to clean that window. "If this window is his main window, then for him it is not a 1% stuck rate," Li said. "It is a zero-or-one problem."

Leiphone reported that the first version's thresholds are a floor rather than a ceiling. Li said Ecovacs' internal test standard covers far more scenarios; if all user scenarios were included as test items, there were concerns that not many products could meet the standard when it was first introduced. Under the current mechanism, a published standard cannot be adjusted for two to three years, and a revision takes about a year from initiation to implementation, so the system will run stably for three to four years. The first standard also had to define terms such as adsorption failure, abnormal operation, power loss, stuck conditions and obstacle crossing, which brands had described differently before 2026.

Ecovacs began research and development in 2011 and launched its first Windowba in 2013. The company said its years of work on Deebot robot vacuums transferred to Windowba: bumper and ball-head detection came from Deebot, as did mop cleaning, while Windowba's work on vertical adsorption and edge recognition fed back into the company's sensor and path-planning capabilities. Its product path has moved from a standalone machine that can hold on, to a base station that completes the cleaning cycle, to automatic mop cleaning to reduce user intervention. Base-station products launched at the end of 2023 and in 2024 combined power and safety rope and added a built-in battery for low-power scenarios, which Ecovacs sees as a turning point. AVC data showed Ecovacs accounted for more than 60% of domestic window-cleaning robot sales in 2025 and ranked first in China for five consecutive years; in the first quarter of 2026, its share of the online premium segment above 2,000 yuan reached 96.5%. IDC data showed global shipments of about 1.195 million units and a 50.30% share in 2025, and 1.075 million units and a 57.60% share in the first half of 2026, ranking first globally.

Leiphone reported that the standard can define basic safety and cleaning performance but cannot cover every household window. Irregular, narrow and obstructed windows remain a dividing line, and a machine that meets the standard but gets stuck, misses spots or leaves water marks in real homes still requires human intervention. The next stage for the industry must address complex window shapes, the upper limit of cleaning performance and further reducing manual intervention, according to the report. Li said in a group interview that if global standards are ultimately defined by two or three domestic brands, whether they can actually influence overseas brands, countries and users is a major question.