While robots that clean your floors (Roomba) have been around for years, Ecovacs has introduced two very interesting robot helpers for the home. The Winbot is a robot that attaches to your windows and scrubs them clean. The unit consists of two halves of a clamshell (for lack of a better word) that are magnetically coupled around your window pane. One half provides locomotion to both sides and the other does the washing, meaning you have to flip it to clean both. The newer model can even cling onto double pane windows with a 1-inch gap.

Another model introduced this year has a sensor to detect poor air quality (odors as well as particles such as smoke) and will actually move to parts of your home with the highest concentration of poor air quality to clean it. Airbot (bet you didn’t see that coming) is equipped with 2 HEPA filters and an activated charcoal filter.

If there’s anything Hollywood movies have taught me, it’s that robots always start out as cute and cuddly window washers but eventually try to destroy humanity. If  T-1000, I mean “Airbot”, gets an Ethernet jack next year so he can call Skynet, I’m heading for the hills.