We’ve been waiting on Rosey the robot for over 60 years now—some version of a robotic servant to take over the menial household chores that nobody enjoys. And judging by the footage that’s emerged from CES in Las Vegas this year, we’re still going to be waiting a while longer. But that doesn’t mean there’s reason to despair. The robots on display may be slow but they looked moderately impressive in some fun ways.
The robot that’s perhaps gotten the most attention for its slow movements at CES is CLOiD from LG Electronics. The robot appeared on stage with LG executive Brandt Varner, who handed CLOiD a towel that it then placed into a washing machine.
As you can see it was slow. Painfully slow, as so many news outlets have now put it.
The robot doesn’t have legs and moves via a wheeled base that’s actually closer to Rosey from the Jetsons than other bipedal ideas for humanoid robots. And it demonstrated other skills at CES offstage, including grabbing a carton of milk out of the fridge and grabbing some keys off a couch in order to hand them to a human. The robot also folded some laundry, which was also pretty damn slow.
Why on Earth would I be impressed at all with this? The part that makes me optimistic about how this is all progressing is the fact that LG says this is all being done autonomously.
As the company explains:
At the core of LG CLOiD is the company’s Physical AI technology, which combines:
- Vision Language Model (VLM) – converts images and video into structured, language-based understanding
- Vision Language Action (VLA) – translates visual and verbal inputs into physical actions
These models have been trained on tens of thousands of hours of household task data, enabling LG CLOiD to recognize appliances, interpret user intent and execute context-appropriate actions such as opening doors or transferring objects.
That puts it ahead of the vaporware robot demonstrations from years gone by where everything was operated remotely by an unseen human. Back in the 1950s, there was RCA-Whirlpool’s robot vacuum, put on display for the Soviets under the false pretense that it was operating independently. And Elon Musk’s Optimus robot has been updated to use that same trick here in the 2020s, with teleoperation for things like serving popcorn, pouring beer, or folding laundry. A much ridiculed video from the Wall Street Journal in October showed the Neo robot from 1X Technologies is also remotely controlled. Is that the future?
Yes, it does appear that CLOiD has some ways to go before it can be sold to consumers, as LG says they have no immediate plans to make the robot commercially available. And there’s no guarantee it ever will be sitting on store shelves for anyone to buy. But it was a fun demonstration that wasn’t attempting to deceive anyone. That feels like a win in a crowded robotics space with some notable carnival barkers who are selling household robots without being transparent about their levels of autonomy.
There’s also Sharpa’s robot North, which can play ping pong. Sharpa describes the robot as having “Human-like upper-body range of motion, from neck to waist and from shoulder to wrist.” And it looks pretty cool in action, as you can see in the video below.
Fully autonomous ping-pong game and windmill assembly preview—live at CES!
Can’t wait to show North, our full-body robot, to the world!
Stop by Booth #9251 North Hall to see it in action.#Sharpa #SharpaNorth #SharpaWave #AI #robot #pingpong @CES pic.twitter.com/6OfP7fDmqq— Sharpa (@SharpaRobotics) January 6, 2026
North delivers a 0.02-second reaction time, according to the company, and is fully autonomous. That autonomy is, again, what makes this so exciting, even if North isn’t going to beat Marty Supreme anytime soon.
The second part of the video shows North manipulating objects with some dexterity, though you’ll note it’s sped up 4x. But the fact that it’s also operating autonomously should give those people fantasizing about having their own personal Rosey companion some hope for the future. It’s a cool thing to watch, even if you know it’s been sped up.
Not all of the robots had a humanoid form like CLOiD and North. You’ve got iGarden’s new M1 robotic pool cleaners and L Series and L AWD Series robotic lawnmowers, variations of robots we’ve seen before that handle tasks around the home without needing to look like Rosey.
Roborock’s Saros Rover is in that bucket of non-humanoid robots as a low-profile vacuum, but this isn’t your father’s Roomba. It can climb stairs with legs that are, dare I say, cute? The Saros Rover doesn’t have a launch date yet, but it’s also one of those robots that’s just moderately fun to watch in some way.
Roborock’s Saros Rover is a robot vacuum with legs that can climb stairs and clean them #CES2026 pic.twitter.com/1dCHSAeyJZ
— Ray Wong (@raywongy) January 7, 2026
None of these robots look like they’re going to knock your socks off. But maybe I’m weird for being pleasantly surprised by the humble demonstrations after watching guys like Elon Musk pull off demos in 2025 that were more like magic tricks than peeks at the future.
When it comes right down to it, I have a lot more respect for a fully autonomous robot demonstration that moves a bit slowly over Optimus getting teleoperated by some unseen force behind a curtain. Because Optimus has done its own laundry-folding demonstration, if you recall.
And, yes, that’s a human hand poking out of the corner as the robot is being teleoperated. Tesla has yet to show a video of Optimus folding laundry autonomously.
Gizmodo is on the ground in Las Vegas all week bringing you everything you need to know about the tech unveiled at CES 2026. You can follow our CES live blog here and find all our coverage here.
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