It was only a matter of time before someone came up with the bright idea of strapping a robot vacuum to a drone and having the drone carry it up the stairs. The idea comes from Mova, a Dreame sub-brand owned by the same parent company. I watched it in action at CES 2026, and I can confirm it works. Sort of.
A DJI for your robovac
To be clear, this isn’t a product that’s likely to come to market any time soon or ever. It’s more of a proof of concept that Mova is calling the Pilot 70. The done is custom-designed to carry the load of the robot vacuum and presumably also has navigation that allows it to map interior and exterior layouts. Think of it as a “DJI for your robovac,” as Tara Brown, associate social producer at CNET, put it.
For the demo, everything is contained in a fairly small metal box, since Mova and the CES organizers want the Pilot 70 crashing somewhere on the crowded show floor. I watched the drone take off and hover in the air for maybe 30 seconds to a minute, before landing again. I expected it to land on the black platform pictured in the photo above, but for some reason, it didn’t. My contact at Mova said the landing was working in previous demos, but there may have been a technical issue this time.
Ultimately, it wasn’t airborne for very long, so it was hard to make must judgment on how it’ll work in real life. It also looked a little jerky to me, so I imagine there are a lot of kinks to still work out.
In a perfect scenario, according to the demo video Mova showed me, the drone would carry the robot vacuum from a base station to a second or third floor of a multi-story home. Notably, this is a very rich person’s house, as demonstrated in the video, with high ceilings and a wide, open landing. I doubt it would work nearly as well in a skinny townhouse or brownstone.
Another video also showed it outside and carrying the robot vacuum up to a hard-to-reach balcony, and dropping it off to clean. I assume that after it’s done cleaning, the drone would come back to pick it up.
The complications here are pretty obvious. Most people don’t have the wide open spaces and high ceilings in their homes for a drone to fly safely. And the ones that do likely have a cleaning staff of some kind that will do a better job than a robot vacuum. Clearly, this isn’t a product you should expect to buy any time soon, but I give points for a cool concept, even if it’s probably impractical for most people.
Zeus 60 stair climbing robot
On a more practical level, Mova has the Zeus 60, stair stair-climbing robot. This is a much more practical solution, and it’s one that the Mova representative told me will eventually come to market. The Zeus 60 operates similarly to the Eufy Marswalker and the Dreame CyberX concept. It’s a shell or walker that fits over an existing robot vacuum, and it carries the robot vacuum up the stairs and deposits it at the top, so it’s very different from the Saros Rover, our best of CES winner for smart home, which has the legs directly attached to the body and maneuverability that impressed me.
The Zeus 60 should support steps up to 9.84 inches, features “dual-sided independent climbing modules,” which I assume refers to its legs, and includes over ten sets of sensors.
It’s a bit overengineered, as there are numerous moving parts involved. There are a pair of lifts that raise the body of the robot vacuum up to the next step, an extension that safely deposits on the step, then the lift system retracts, and it does it all over again. Once the unit reaches the top, the front swings open, allowing the robot vacuum to roll out and do its work.
Mova wasn’t able to share many details with me about which robot vacuums will work with the Zeus 60, but it should support more than one future Mova robot vacuum. Unlike the Pilot 70, it will eventually be available for purchase.
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