Robots Get Down to Work at IFA 2026, Leiphone Report Says

Mechanical arms were the most visible expression of that shift. iRobot's Roomba Duo concept split deep cleaning and low-clearance access between a full-size mother robot and an 8.35-cm-tall child robot; the mother could release and recover the smaller unit with an arm. Leiphone said the design was closer to a small multi-robot system than a single vacuum, but questions remained about higher cost, floor space, two sets of batteries and consumables, and the possibility of duplicate or overlapping cleaning.

Arms also addressed one of the most common garden complaints: the strip of grass left around edges. Navimow's H5 Pro mower extended its cutter deck 7.7 cm outward and used a rake-like mechanism to pull wall-side grass into the blade. In low light, a combined camera, LiDAR and thermal-sensing system could identify an animal as a potential target, stop work and replan the route. The report said Navimow was testing the feature with German hedgehog protection groups.

Dreame's outdoor-garden offering at IFA spanned three brands—DREAME, MOVA and NexLawn—with more than a dozen new products. The display included the company's first public showing of a third-generation digital lidar, the MLR-96; edge-trimming systems that work with zero clearance; AstraX, a robotic-arm mower with replaceable tools for clearing, picking and watering; and the A20 pool robot with binocular AI vision and an AI stain-seeking mode. Dreame also demonstrated how a five-joint mechanical arm on the Cyber20 Ultra vacuum can switch between a gripper, vacuum and small mop, open a door, clean behind it and return to its base station.

Dreame said its mowing products won nine international awards at IFA. It also introduced a commercial mower, AURION F115, for large lawns, campuses and sports fields, along with NexFleet software for fleet coordination. Citing its own data, Dreame said its robot mowers led the global market in the first quarter with a 27.63 percent share of shipments and 29.06 percent of sales; first-half 2026 shipments exceeded 500,000 units, and the company forecast more than 1 million for the full year.

Other companies filled task-specific gaps around the home and yard. Roborock showed its first pool robot, RockAqua P1, aiming at areas as shallow as 15 cm, and a wheel-legged concept robot, G-Rover, for stairs. DJI brought its Osmo 360 II and ROMO 2 home cleaner to Europe for the first time, with ROMO 2 applying drone-style perception to recognize cables and transparent objects while cleaning edges with an arm. Ecovacs introduced the W3 window-cleaning robot, whose base station automatically washes and squeezes its mop pad and controls water, removing a manual cleanup step.

Tineco stayed with appliance maintenance, showing a floor washer that combined steam and hot water and a vacuum station that compacts debris, seals its dust bag and can run for up to 45 days before the bag needs changing. Hisense, by contrast, used IFA to show an RGB-Mini LED television and a home AI operating system that lets a TV coordinate lights, air conditioning, kitchen appliances and EV charging around viewing scenes; Leiphone said such a system depends on stable cross-device data sharing and clear limits on proactive action.