When she pushed open her front door after work, Ye Zi smelled a strange odor.
It turned out that her robot vacuum had dragged her puppy's waste across half the living room, even contaminating its docking station. What was supposed to be an automatic cleaning session turned into a scene of Ye Zi wearing a mask, cleaning both the floor and the machine.
Such experiences are not uncommon. Power cords, toys, transparent vases, door thresholds, low furniture, and chair legs are all variables a robot vacuum must confront upon entering a real home. It's supposed to reduce housework, but one misjudgment can turn a minor hassle into a major one.
This is also an awkward point for the robot vacuum industry. Despite years of intense competition, market penetration remains below 10%. The core issue is that while it has proven "a machine can sweep floors," it hasn't sufficiently proven "users can safely hand over their floors to the machine."
Behind the low penetration rate is a barrier of trust.
I. User Hesitancy: Not a Lack of Need, But a Lack of Confidence
Robot vacuums don't actually face a standard floor, but a dynamic household.
These dynamic variables dictate that a robot vacuum cannot merely accomplish "vacuuming" + "mopping." It must also assess the environment, identify risks, plan routes, handle corners and edges, and disturb people as little as possible.
In recent years, industry competition has heavily focused on specs: suction power gets stronger, mop configurations constantly change, docking station features keep adding up, SKUs proliferate, and product combinations become increasingly complex. Improving specs is certainly meaningful, but it hasn't fully addressed users' most pressing concerns:
Will it knock over a vase?
Will it get tangled in wires?
Will it scatter cat litter?
Will it get stuck on a threshold?
Will it miss the space under cabinets and around chair legs?
Will the docking station start to smell after a few uses?
If these problems aren't consistently solved, it's hard to put users at ease.
This is precisely why robot vacuums have yet to become a household staple appliance like refrigerators or washing machines.
Therefore, what the robot vacuum industry truly needs to compete on in the next phase is not "how powerful it looks," but "how few hassles it causes in use."
II. DJI's Approach: Less Manual Sweeping, Less Rescue, Less Maintenance
Against this backdrop, DJI's entry into the robot vacuum segment becomes noteworthy.
As the undisputed global leader in consumer drones, DJI has also rapidly risen to the top in action cameras and handheld imaging devices. Its repeated success in entering new categories isn't luck, but the application of a transferable skill set: spatial perception, environmental recognition, motion control, and systems engineering. Applied to the home floor, these translate precisely into obstacle avoidance, path planning, coverage, and stability—the very core experience issues for robot vacuums.
The recently launched new product, ROMO 2, materializes this transfer of capability.
Its product logic revolves around three keywords: less manual sweeping, less rescue, less maintenance.
1. Obstacle Avoidance: For the First Time, "Tidying the Floor Before Starting" Becomes Optional
Many people only realize after buying a robot vacuum that they must first perform "pre-cleaning": picking up cables, putting away toys, moving small objects to prevent the machine from getting stuck, bumping into things, or dragging them around.
This is a core pain point for robot vacuum complaints. Due to insufficient recognition accuracy, they either directly knock over transparent glass vases or swerve too early, leaving large areas for manual touch-up cleaning.
This is especially true in households with children or pets, where floor environments are often less predictable. Lego pieces, cards, data cables, cat toys can appear on the floor at any moment.
ROMO 2's obstacle avoidance approach clearly continues DJI's drone technology path. It enhances recognition of transparent objects, small objects, and low obstacles through millimeter-level sensing, active light sources, and a new generation of avoidance algorithms.
More importantly, it doesn't simply "see an obstacle and detour." It first judges the object type and position, then decides whether to approach, pause, or go around. For example, when encountering glass, mirrors, or data cables, it handles them more cautiously to reduce collisions, tangling, and accidental dragging.
The resulting change in experience is direct: users don't need to clear the floor before every use, and the robot vacuum no longer feels like a "semi-automatic device" that constantly needs supervision.
2. Obstacle Crossing: Not Hard Charging, But an Elegant "Leg Lift"
A common embarrassment for robot vacuums is getting trapped by home thresholds, floor tracks, or sliding door rails.
These are almost non-existent for humans, but for a robot vacuum, they can be an insurmountable hurdle. The machine gets stuck at the kitchen or balcony doorway, requiring human intervention. Many users even resort to installing additional ramp pads, which adds cost and disrupts the home's aesthetics.
ROMO 2's approach isn't "hard charging." It first identifies the obstacle's height and position, then crosses it using dynamic adaptive mechanical "feet." Depending on the scenario, it can choose synchronized two-wheel crossing or a step-by-step, "hurdling" style crossing.
Its dual-layer continuous crossing capability reaches 8.5cm. The significance of this number is that many thresholds, tracks, and level differences that previously required manual intervention can now be handled by the machine itself.
For users, improved obstacle crossing isn't about showing off technical prowess. It means the robot vacuum can truly perform cross-area cleaning. Kitchen, balcony, and bathroom doorways cease to be frequent "SOS points."
3. Cleaning: From "Can Reach" to "Cleans Intelligently"
People have come to accept that robot vacuums inevitably have blind spots requiring manual touch-up.
Cleaning blind spots roughly fall into two categories: areas hard to reach, like around table and chair legs, under cabinet overhangs, beneath refrigerator doors; and scenarios hard to clean thoroughly, like mixed dry and wet messes. The classic case: a child knocks over a breakfast plate, spilling milk on the floor with dry cereal scattered around.
For the first type of blind spot, ROMO 2 primarily uses LiDAR and an ultra-long extending mechanical arm.
The mechanical arm increases its coverage length by 7.8cm. Paired with an independent TOF LiDAR, it can more accurately perceive the environment, discern whether ahead is irregular furniture, table legs, or cabinet undersides, and adjust its extension angle accordingly to quickly clean blind spots.
For instance, in the dining area, ROMO 2 can navigate around table and chair legs, easily sweeping up floor debris without bumping and moving furniture, and more precisely removing crumbs. Users no longer need to move dining chairs beforehand, clear the floor, or perform touch-up cleaning.
The second type of blind spot stems from floor environment complexity, requiring evolution in both "brainpower" and "physical capability."
ROMO 2 enhances AI recognition to accurately identify multiple types of dirt and match corresponding cleaning strategies. This is also an industry-first innovation.
For example, upon detecting cat litter, it lowers its movement speed and side brush rotation, approaching slowly to avoid scattering; upon detecting liquid stains, it first detours to clean surrounding dry debris, then returns, extends the arm, and cleans in a "回" shaped pattern without the robot contacting the liquid, preventing "dirty mopping dirty."
4. Self-Cleaning Capability: No Need to Worry About It
Robot vacuums have another often-overlooked problem: after cleaning the floor, the trouble often shifts to the user.
The mop pads might seem clean, but wastewater, hair, and fine debris generated during cleaning can remain in the docking station base, corners, crevices, and water channels. After some use, the station can become sticky, smelly, and users still need to manually disassemble and clean the base, wipe死角.
High maintenance frequency essentially replaces the original "sweeping and mopping" with "servicing the robot vacuum."
ROMO 2's emphasis on "365-day annual maintenance-free" targets precisely this issue.
Through its station self-cleaning system, it reduces residue buildup and manual cleaning frequency. During cleaning, it minimizes wastewater overflow and enhances the thoroughness of station rinsing. For example, the station base uses materials less prone to trapping dirt, coupled with high-pressure water flow, waste suction, and air duct systems to automate actions like mop washing, wastewater drainage, and station cleaning as much as possible.
These technical details may not be overtly noticeable in daily use, but they determine one outcome: after the machine finishes cleaning, users don't need to clean the machine next. This is the true value of "less maintenance."
5. Detail Refinement: Carpets, Hair, and Design
For more specific home scenarios, ROMO 2 also incorporates targeted designs.
For carpet cleaning, it uses 36,000Pa focused suction and intelligent pressure boost to handle dust and debris deep within carpet fibers. For pet-owning or long-haired households, it employs dual-disc mops and a dual-coverage structure to reduce hair tangling and cleaning omissions.
Design-wise, ROMO 2's transparent aesthetic also differentiates it from traditional robot vacuums. As an appliance meant to stay in the home long-term, appearance isn't just an aesthetic issue; it affects whether it can blend naturally into the living space.
Overall, ROMO 2 isn't simply about stacking robot vacuum specs another level higher. It更像是 translates DJI's capabilities in spatial perception, obstacle avoidance control, and systems engineering into specific cleaning experiences: less frequent manual touch-up, less constant rescue, less repeated maintenance.
This is the most noteworthy aspect of DJI's entry into this segment.
III. What the Industry Truly Needs to Compete On Is Trust
Any frequently used appliance first needs to solve one problem: establish trust. But currently, many users are stuck at step one: not knowing whom to trust.
Brand strength is foundational. Data from research firm Ipsos shows that globally, 77% of respondents are more inclined to trust new products from familiar brands. That is, before even encountering the specific product, they screen decisions based on brand. When trust is strong enough, users may not even spend much time researching specs. This is one advantage for DJI entering the robot vacuum field.
Over the past 20 years, DJI has long held a leading position in the global consumer drone market; over the past 3 years, it has risen to global prominence in handheld intelligent imaging; Pocket 3 sold millions, and Pocket 4, recently launched, also quickly gained market attention. Throughout this process, DJI has built a distinctive brand culture and appeal.
Leveraging brand strength as a foundation, DJI excels at applying its technological积累 to new fields, bringing fresh problem-solving approaches to industries.
It also "listens to advice."
During ROMO 2's development, the team collected extensive user feedback. For instance, some users mentioned wanting it to display drying time like a washing machine, or wanting low-water alerts—features ROMO 2 ultimately incorporated.
In the robot vacuum segment, which requires patience, DJI's long-termism基因 is helping reduce industry noise, refocus on user experience itself, and form a clearer product narrative: not competing on specs, not showing off tech, but establishing a core user experience of "less intervention." This might attract more users to try and gradually help them build trust.
Of course, whether a single product can change an industry requires longer-term验证. Robot vacuums aren't发布会 products; repurchase, retention,闲置 rates, and word-of-mouth are the real tests.
The development of the smartphone industry might serve as a reference.
Before Steve Jobs pulled out that first iPhone in 2007, global smartphone penetration was only around 5%. Most products had bulky physical keyboards and complex operation. The iPhone boldly did subtraction, removing the physical keyboard, replacing buttons with touchscreens, returning to user experience, and focusing on three core functions: calling, browsing the internet, and listening to music.
The rest, as they say, is history. People also habitually use the "iPhone moment" to define key inflection points in various industries.
This is also one reason ROMO 2 deserves close attention. It refocuses the product on user experience, making it simpler, easier to use, and more stable—much like the iPhone's initial approach.
As robot vacuums shift from spec competition to trust competition, how will a company with technological积累 and cross-domain capabilities reorganize the cleaning, obstacle avoidance, maintenance, and interaction experience? Will it bring about the "iPhone moment" for the robot vacuum industry?
Conclusion
That messy cleaning incident Ye Zi experienced points not to utter user失望 in robot vacuums, but to a real test this category must face: a home is not a laboratory.
Real homes have pets, toys, wires, thresholds, furniture gaps, and various unplanned surprises. Whether a robot vacuum can clean thoroughly is just the first step. Whether it can understand the environment, avoid risks, cover corners and edges, clean itself, and trouble people as little as possible determines if it can become a reliable household helper.
Robot vacuums have developed to a point where specs are already plenty热闹. The next phase of competition must ultimately return to a simpler question: do users dare to hand over their home floors to it?
Whoever can consistently deliver less manual sweeping, less rescue, and less maintenance will have a chance to truly sway those 90% of Chinese households still hesitating.
