Yes, I Do Want a Drink-Carrying Robot

CES is the time of year to expect tech that isn’t always, well, actually marketable. Sometimes the premise doesn’t make sense, like a robot vacuum that can not only clean floors but also deliver drinks. And yet I kind of want one anyway.

No Longer Just a Robot Vacuum

SwitchBot is a smart home company that sells everything from fancy CO2 monitors to smart shower hooks—hey, moving a wet shower curtain with wet hands is a problem that needs solving! At CES 2025, it showed off a robot whose primary purpose seems, first and foremost, to be adorable—but it’s also a household helper that can do more than sweep and mop floors. Its name is the K20+ Pro.

SwitchBot refers to the K20+ Pro as a multitasking household robot. The company envisions a future where your home has several of these helpers shuttling across your floor, performing menial tasks that you are either tired of doing or, frankly, never get around to anyway.

So What Else Can This Robot Do?

The K20+ Pro is modular. It looks like a tall, wide, elevated robot vacuum with a regular robot vacuum underneath. The main component has lights in front that look like eyes. On top, you’ll find ports and connectors for a varied range of components that SwitchBot sells.

I didn’t attend CES, but my colleagues who did saw this robot on the show floor picking up balls of paper using an arm attachment. This is intended to be cool, but it begs the question: Who has balls of paper spread all over the floor?

You can see this feature (Organizing!) early on in SwitchBot’s announcement video.

As the advertisement goes on, it begets more questions. The robot is shown moving around an office with a fan on its head, patrolling a living room with a security camera (this one), streaming a cooking video on a tablet as it moves about a kitchen, and, yes, delivering drinks to someone seated on a couch (the drinks rest on an air purifier with a small table on top). While there are many questions we could dive into here, we’ll stick to just one: How useful is a robot delivering drinks if said robot needs someone to first hand it a drink to deliver?

This, turns out, is the gimmicky feature on display that I see myself appreciating most.

Why I Want a Robot Butler

I’m a parent. I work from home, and when I’m not writing (and, let’s be real, also while I’m writing), I’m someone that everyone else in my house asks to do things. “Daddy, I’m hungry?” “Where did I leave my jacket?” “Do you know where my wallet is?”

I get a substantial portion of my daily steps by walking back and forth down the hall of my ranch home, seeing why people are calling my name and bringing them the things they ask for.

So when I ask myself: Who put the drink on the robot that gets sent to the person on the couch? That person is me. I can see usefulness in a robot that I can drop a sippy cup on and tell it to deliver to the living room. Or a plate of apple slices. Or a bowl of Easy Mac.

I don’t even need the robot to be precise. “Here, drop this Amazon package on the floor in my bedroom” is a command that would get some occasional use. I don’t need to open this box right now. I know what it is, and I know where it will be useful, I just don’t want to have to walk to the other side of the house right this moment when I’m in the middle of cooking.

By this point, robot vacuums are the norm, but I don’t mind vacuuming my own floors. I can actually see more appeal in a household delivery bot that cuts down on the number of laps I have to do around my home. I’m sure SwitchBot will charge way more than I want to spend for the luxury, but to me, at least the luxury makes sense. Not as much sense as a solar-powered umbrella, but more than a robot sloth that clings to a purse.

Now please, robot, leave me alone, and take this drink with you when you go.