This is the whole truth about DJI making floor-cleaning robots.
There have been multiple rumors outside about DJI's development of a floor - sweeping robot, and this time it's finally officially announced. There are three versions of ROMO in total (DJI ROMO P, DJI ROMO A, DJI ROMO S), and the lowest price in the domestic market is 4,699 yuan. It enters the mid - to high - end market right from the start. Compared with other floor - sweeping robot brands, ROMO features intelligence, hassle - free operation, and good looks. Its specific innovation points are concentrated in three aspects:
Firstly, in terms of appearance, both the cover of the ROMO robot and its self - cleaning base station are semi - transparent. Through the industrial design that exposes the mechanical structure, users can clearly see the orderly arrangement of internal modules. The choice of this transparent texture and smooth curve is not only DJI's ultimate pursuit of aesthetics but also its confidence in internal stacking design and quality control. After all, when you open a traditional floor - sweeping robot, the internal stacking is quite messy. DJI believes that a floor - sweeping robot can be a living work, and cleaning technology can also become a visual highlight in the home space. In the era of the appearance economy, providing good emotional value is equally important.
In addition to continuing DJI's consistent functionalist design aesthetics, ROMO takes intelligence to the extreme. In terms of intelligent applications, it has the same environmental perception and intelligent path planning capabilities as DJI drones and is equipped with top - of - the - line visual sensors in the industry. The high - performance chip, combined with DJI's more than a decade of profound accumulation in machine - learning perception algorithms, gives ROMO the smartest "brain", enabling it to easily identify most obstacles in the home and helping the robot achieve the smartest and most efficient path planning throughout the house.
This is specifically reflected in two aspects. On the one hand, ROMO breaks through the boundary of obstacle size, being able to identify even smaller obstacles. On the other hand, it breaks through the boundary of obstacle - avoidance stability. For a floor - sweeping robot, the definition of obstacle - avoidance is that it should work stably every time, rather than occasionally being able to identify obstacles and occasionally not.
In fact, users who have used floor - sweeping robots are often deeply troubled by post - maintenance, and one of the core highlights of ROMO is its self - cleaning base station design. Traditional solutions in this module often deal with dirt by adding removable parts or complex structures, but this doesn't fundamentally solve the problem. Because in the end, all hair and dirt will adhere to the filter screen of the dirt - suction port or hide under the self - cleaning scraper. Users have to remove and rinse these parts regularly to prevent the base station from smelling bad.
DJI has chosen a base station tray with a simplified and highly integrated design. It abandons the filter screen structure and scraping mechanism of traditional floor - sweeping robots and is designed with an integrated cleaning tray and a 16mm super - large dirt - suction port. The cross - sectional area of the dirt - suction port is 6 - 7 times that of traditional floor - sweeping robots. Coupled with four high - pressure water channels directly flushing the chassis, it can achieve zero - maintenance of the chassis and no odor.
These are just the more obvious design highlights of the ROMO product in terms of functions. Then, what the outside world really wants to know is: Why does DJI want to enter such a highly competitive floor - sweeping robot market? And why at this time?
After communicating with several DJI insiders, we finally found the answer - daring to be the latecomer and then leading the way.
DJI's New Changes
According to Hard Krypton's understanding, DJI launched a feasibility study on floor - sweeping robots in 2020 and officially started the R & D project in 2021. In the same year of the project establishment, Ecovacs' sales revenue from floor - sweeping robots reached 6.7 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 58%. Roborock sold 2.8199 million floor - sweeping robots, achieving sales revenue of 5.6 billion yuan. In addition, the Chinese floor - sweeping robot market surpassed the US market for the first time to become the world's largest market in this year.
There are already many players in the floor - sweeping robot industry, and user education has been completed. So, how should DJI make its floor - sweeping robot? This is the primary question facing DJI.
In fact, DJI's floor - sweeping robot project took many detours at the beginning. According to DJI's past thinking, its products must be able to disrupt the industry and feature cool technologies. So, DJI initially chose the roller cleaning solution for the floor - washing machine. The floor - washing machine can instantly clean up an egg that has fallen on the floor, which fits the cool image.
However, the internal team soon found that the roller and crawler design required users to regularly disassemble and clean the sewage tank of the floor - sweeping robot. Moreover, many users easily ignored the maintenance difficulties before purchasing. After buying it home, not only was disassembly laborious, but the sewage tank was also dirty and smelly. Obviously, this was not a good product. Since it couldn't provide a good experience, even when it reached the mold - making stage, DJI still abandoned the roller cleaning solution for the floor - washing machine and chose double mops instead. Double mops are sufficient for daily cleaning needs and don't require maintenance.
It may seem like just a change in the technical solution, but behind this transformation lies a subtle change in DJI's engineer culture. It has gradually shifted from the early pursuit of absolute and extreme innovation to not innovating for the sake of innovation, but rather insisting on making choices and doing things that are of real value to users. Since then, the DJI floor - sweeping robot team has calmed down, abandoned superficial technological innovation, and no longer simply pursues industry disruption. Instead, they start from the user experience, continuously iterate and surpass themselves from scratch within the company.
Of course, this also implies a cultural value drive of daring to be the latecomer and then leading the way. For the ROMO team, in the future, "being able to make choices is more important than coming up with ideas", and this concept will always run through the entire product thinking process.
What is needed to make good choices? Independent thinking. This is prominently reflected in the intelligence of ROMO. At the beginning, ROMO used a multi - line lidar, but this high - performance technology couldn't fully exert its value in the home environment. For example, a toothpick can be clearly seen when standing upright, but it's difficult to identify when lying on the ground. In addition, this technology originated from the military field, so it's quite expensive, several times the industry average price.
After multiple internal discussions, ROMO finally combined binocular vision with DJI's drone binocular obstacle - avoidance technology to form the optimal solution of lidar + binocular vision. For example, in the autonomous path - planning algorithm, based on DJI's core technology over the years, the ROMO floor - sweeping robot constructs an indoor map through laser or visual SLAM technology to achieve precise navigation in GPS - free environments (such as indoors or complex terrains).
DJI ROMO A
The floor - sweeping robot market is highly competitive, and it seems difficult to find differentiation. Existing brands are frantically increasing their technical parameters, but DJI has fundamentally changed users' perception of floor - sweeping robots through well - considered trade - offs.
In fact, the floor - sweeping robot market is large enough, with an industry penetration rate of less than 10%. There is still five - fold growth potential even if it reaches 50%. Currently, both Ecovacs and Roborock have annual revenues exceeding 10 billion yuan. DJI's floor - sweeping robot is worth looking forward to, as the home space scenario is the area in its product line that is closest to consumers.
The home space is an extension of DJI's spatial intelligence. It could "take to the sky" before, and now it can "go to the ground". In recent years, in addition to drones, DJI has successively expanded into new product categories such as handheld photography equipment, outdoor power supplies, autonomous driving, and E - bikes. The high demand for the OP3, in particular, proves the success of DJI's product expansion. This also shows that DJI is fulfilling its mission of "being a pioneer in the era of spatial intelligence and making the beauty of technology beyond imagination" proposed in 2019. The launch of the ROMO floor - sweeping robot indicates that DJI has decided to enter ordinary households and achieve technological popularization.
DJI's Methodology for Floor - Sweeping Robots
A well - known consumer investor recently said, "In the consumer technology industry, user insight is the most important business model. However, it's obvious that many technology companies forget about user insight as they develop and get caught in endless competition." After four years of R & D, the product methodology distilled from ROMO is also based on user insight.
If you ask what the biggest turning point for floor - sweeping robots is now, it must be AI and embodied intelligence, including robotic arms. A robotic arm can transform two - dimensional cleaning into three - dimensional cleaning, further improving the cleaning coverage and experience.
ROMO also has a robotic arm, and it's a robotic arm that truly solves users' pain points in corner cleaning during the cleaning process. It's usually hidden at the bottom of the robot body and will be intelligently deployed based on the local real - time map and flexible fitting algorithm when necessary to clean along irregular furniture, around table and chair legs, and under cabinets. Since the mainstream solutions not only fail to significantly reduce user intervention but also bring additional fault risks and maintenance burdens due to the complex structure, they hardly provide any incremental value.
"Robotic arms are great for marketing, but they have a negative impact on user value, and the cost will be borne by users. This goes against DJI's principle of putting user needs first." Regarding user needs, DJI has summarized four dimensions: intelligence, cleanliness, hassle - free operation, and quietness. ROMO aims to be the best in all dimensions, and on this basis, its appearance should be stunning enough to maximize users' emotional value.
Take low noise as an example. As a floor - sweeping robot is used for a long time, the noise level tends to increase. However, ROMO has reduced the noise intensity by 80%. It did this by referring to the exhaust noise - reduction principle of cars for the first time and designing a three - stage noise - reduction system (with three silencers) in the dust - collection air duct of the base station. Moreover, it doesn't sacrifice the dust - collection effect, while mainstream noise - reduction methods usually do.
With such high investment, does it mean the price has to be extremely high? In 2024, the overall average price of the entire online floor - sweeping robot market was 3,524 yuan, a 5.4% increase from the previous year. If we exclude the average price of 3,698 yuan in Q4 due to the national subsidy for trade - ins, the actual average price was 3,360 yuan.
According to Hard Krypton's understanding, the initial price of ROMO was planned to exceed 6,000 yuan. After all, a small sensor chip on ROMO uses the best chip from DJI's drones. However, the internal team believed that the price should also be optimized for users, so they actively chose to compress the profit. "DJI's products may seem relatively expensive, but in fact, since we use the best raw materials and components on the market and use DJI's strong supply chain to ensure cost and quality control, DJI's products are actually more cost - effective. Essentially, we pursue quality - to - price ratio rather than simply low prices."
Another manifestation of being user - centered is that ROMO chooses the user net - promoter marketing strategy, that is, word - of - mouth promotion. This way, there's no need for hundreds of millions of yuan in marketing investment. The saved marketing expenses can be fully invested in the product itself, thus forming a healthy business closed - loop. A good product experience brings good word - of - mouth recommendations, and good word - of - mouth further improves product strength.
Of course, the good word - of - mouth also comes from the large amount of user research that DJI has done, including questionnaire surveys, face - to - face interviews with both potential and existing users, and in - depth interviews at users' homes to collect data.
A floor - sweeping robot that shows the influence of drones everywhere may be a form of "dimensionality reduction". Regarding the future industry landscape, it's worth looking forward to the new changes that DJI will bring. After all, the industry is still in a high - growth stage. In 2024, the global shipment of intelligent floor - sweeping robots reached 20.603 million units, a year - on - year increase of 11.2%. The annual sales revenue reached 9.31 billion US dollars, a year - on - year increase of 19.7%. It's estimated that by 2030, the market size of cleaning appliances in China is expected to reach 60 billion yuan.
Regarding the product launch schedule of the next - generation floor - sweeping robot that the outside world is concerned about, according to Hard Krypton's understanding, the ROMO team has not given a clear timeline yet. For DJI, the first - generation floor - sweeping robot focuses on minimizing user intervention through advanced navigation algorithms, efficient cleaning systems, and intelligent interactive experiences.
What's certain is that DJI's entry into the floor - sweeping robot market is not a trial or a transformation but a natural result of its technological development. For DJI, the floor - sweeping robot can open up a larger consumer market and also represents the evolution of its engineer culture. With its years of accumulated core technologies in sensors (perception, obstacle - avoidance, vision), navigation algorithms, control systems, communication, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, DJI will definitely not stop at just a floor - sweeping robot for the home life scenario.