Can Embodied AI Enter Homes for Chores by Starting with "AI Home Appliances"?

Text by | Fu Chong

Edited by | Su Jianxun

When the "parameter competition" in the home appliance industry reaches a bottleneck, AI may be the breakthrough point to make products more user - friendly.

At the press conference that ended last week, Dreame launched more than 30 new products in one go.

Two AI - powered floor scrubbers attracted particular attention. Their dual mechanical arms can self - clean corners and deeply scrub the floor while the user is dragging the machine.

"In the past few years, the floor scrubber field has favored extreme parameter stacking, but this may not solve users' real pain points regarding stubborn stains and cleaning low - lying spaces," pointed out Wang Hongpin, the head of product research and development in the Chinese market for Dreame's floor scrubber division.

Continuously increasing the suction power value may not necessarily translate into effective cleaning performance. The increase in power also brings negative feedback such as noise and short battery life.

The functions brought by AI technology, through the way of "environmental perception + user intention recognition + action decision - making", enable floor scrubbers to solve problems that couldn't be solved before.

It's like before robots enter households to work, home appliances equipped with AI functions start to help people reduce the burden of housework through basic embodied intelligence capabilities.

The idea of "+AI" is not only reflected in floor scrubbers.

Dreame, whose new products cover large home appliances such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and TVs, is no longer satisfied with being just a cleaning appliance brand. Instead, it is expanding into a full - category home appliance company.

Among them, from large refrigerators to small hair dryers and rings, all emphasize AI capabilities.

Dreame also revealed for the first time its plan to launch AI glasses and the R & D direction of an AI companion robot.

Pan Zhidong, the head of Dreame's AI intelligent hardware division, said in an interview that he hopes to use AI rings and glasses as entry points to connect all products.

According to Pan Zhidong's plan, Dreame's smart home scenarios will extend from floor cleaning appliances to cars, and AI intelligent hardware will serve people's lives in more scenarios.

T60Ultra and H60Ultra floor scrubbers. Photo: Provided by the company

What AI - powered home appliances does Dreame have?

The most intuitive example of the combination of Dreame's products and AI is two new floor scrubbers with mechanical arms.

These two floor scrubbers, model T60Ultra and H60Ultra, are both equipped with dual mechanical arms with scrubbing functions. The front arm is responsible for flexibly scraping off water stains and dirt in corners close to the ground, while the rear arm uses rigid pressure to deal with stubborn stains.

It's equivalent to when the user is dragging the floor scrubber, two mechanical arms controlled by AI are also helping with one rigid and one flexible scraper.

This function aims at the long - standing user pain points of traditional floor scrubbers.

In the past few years, the floor scrubber industry has generally been caught in the competition of "parameter - rolling": stronger suction, larger water volume, and more powerful motors. However, these performance stacks have limited ability to solve problems such as "edge - to - edge cleaning" and gap treatment that users care about.

For this reason, T60 and H60 introduce embodied intelligence algorithms, enabling the dual arms to perceive the environment and make judgments under AI control, achieving "human - like collaboration".

During operation, the floor scrubber perceives the degree of dirt on the ground through high - precision sensors and directional magnetic rings. After the AI identifies the stains, it automatically adjusts the suction power and water volume. When it judges that cleaning is difficult to complete, the floor scrubber will also remind the user to manually select modes such as steam and hot water through changes in lights and sounds.

The AI algorithm is like a "brain", scheduling the actions of the whole machine in real - time and precisely controlling the lifting of the mechanical arms according to the forward or backward state of the device.

"Now the entire floor scrubber industry is in a situation of contention among many competitors, and everyone has their own competitive entry points. Dreame hopes to better solve users' pain points through embodied intelligence," said Wang Hongpin.

He further explained that for floor scrubbers, the concept of embodied intelligence is to enable the machine to have more efficient, thorough, and mysterious cleaning capabilities, and to clean various low - lying spaces and stubborn stains more easily.

Not only floor scrubbers, but the idea of "AI + home appliances" has also been extended to more of Dreame's products.

The AI hair dryer launched at the same time at the press conference can automatically adjust the wind speed and temperature through AI according to the distance between the hair dryer and the hair.

There is also a refrigerator with AI capabilities. Its built - in AI model can monitor and adjust the oxygen concentration in the cabin in real - time and actively sterilize to ensure the freshness of food.

Another AI ring attempts to shrink the AI assistant into a wearable form. The AI ring can serve as an entrance to control smart home devices and also has health monitoring functions.

Dreame mentioned that the AI ring will also be linked with outdoor devices such as the Dreame car that has just been announced for production.

There is a consistent logic behind these products: when the marginal benefit of home appliance hardware upgrades is generally decreasing, the AI technology, which is still in a period of rapid development, is introducing growth space for product innovation.

The upper and lower dual - scrubbing mechanical arms in Dreame's floor scrubber. Photo: Provided by the company

Industry involution, AI is the breaker

Data from AVC shows that the market for cleaning appliances represented by floor scrubbers and vacuum cleaners has achieved rapid growth, with a cumulative sales volume of 22.4 billion yuan, a year - on - year increase of 30%; and a cumulative sales volume of 16.55 million units, a year - on - year increase of 22.1%.

New entrants have come with the sales growth.

On August 6, 2025, DJI released its robot vacuum cleaner DJI ROMO, which marks the company's cross - border entry into the smart home cleaning field, adding to the congestion of this track.

However, in contrast to the growing industry share, the net profits of domestic leading robot vacuum cleaner companies did not show a significant increase in 2024.

In 2024, the net profit of Ecovacs, a listed robot vacuum cleaner company, was 806 million yuan, less than half of the peak in 2021; Roborock's revenue in 2024 increased by 38.03% year - on - year, but its net profit decreased by 3.64% year - on - year.

Both companies attributed price wars and market competition to factors affecting profitability in their financial reports.

AI capabilities are regarded by some companies as a way for the home appliance industry to break through the involution state.

At the beginning of this year, Roborock launched the world's first mass - produced bionic robotic arm robot vacuum cleaner, which can pick up small items dropped on the ground while sweeping. The AI algorithm helps the robot vacuum cleaner identify items and calculate the best grabbing position to improve the accuracy of storage.

The dual - mechanical - arm floor scrubbing robot launched by Dreame this time also uses AI functions to identify stains on the ground and intelligently adjust the cleaning mode on the basis of the original floor scrubbing function.

Whether it is a floor cleaning product that automatically reaches out to "help" when sensing dirt or a hair dryer that adjusts the temperature by identifying the hair state, the current "AI home appliances" are not intended to create a human - like robot, but to "make embodied intelligence smaller and lighter" and break it down into local tasks to be completed.

This may be a transitional form of embodied intelligence and a more realistic implementation path for home scenarios.

Wang Hongpin believes that the maturity of intelligence will provide more development space for floor scrubbers.

"The capabilities of embodied intelligence and dual mechanical arms give the floor scrubber eyes, a brain, and hands. In the future, consumers may only need to push the floor scrubber around the house, and the machine will adjust itself to adapt to different scenarios and complete the cleaning work," he predicted.

However, Dreame's exploration of intelligent hardware doesn't seem to stop at the released AI home appliances.

During the interview session of the press conference, Pan Zhidong, the head of Dreame's AI intelligent hardware division, told Intelligence Emergence that the company plans to launch smart glasses in Q1 of 2026.

Pan Zhidong also revealed that Dreame is exploring an AI companion robot, and the product form may be one of a mobile pet, a desktop pet, or wearable hardware.