The new smart home: Where robots handle chores and provide companionship

China’s home appliance giants are pushing into robots in their race to control the next gateway to the home — despite high costs and tech hurdles

By CLS Marketwatch

A sweeping transformation is unfolding in China’s vast robotics market, led by home appliance makers. From cleaning to cooking, companionship to household chores, robots are emerging in ever-greater variety, with the household setting widely regarded as a primary target for embodied intelligence applications. The evolution of smart home appliances in China has gone beyond simple connection and control, moving into a new stage of embodied intelligence capable of autonomous action, environmental perception and understanding of human needs. Indeed, smart home appliances are entering a new development cycle.

Embodied AI finds its way home

According to data from the China National Light Industry Council, China has become the world’s largest robotics market, accounting for 55% of global robot production. China’s service robot output reached 18.58 million units last year, up 16.1% year-on-year. This immense market potential and a well-established industrial chain form the foundation for Chinese home appliance enterprises to advance into embodied intelligence.

A trend is becoming increasingly apparent in the current home appliance market, with majors such as Haier (6690.HK; 600690.SH), Hisense (0921.HK; 000921.SZ), Ecovacs (603486.SH), and TCL (1070.HK; 000100.SZ) all committed to developing embodied intelligent products for a wide range of household scenarios, including housework, cleaning, companionship and cooking. More importantly, smart home appliances are evolving from simple connection and control products to a new stage of perception and action.

Among these, the embodiment of home appliances and the integration of AI are emerging as two key trends. The AI integration at their core relates to “proactive intelligence,” meaning machines can anticipate user needs and automatically provide related services. The essence of such appliance embodiment lies in their spatial intelligence, which enables machines to move autonomously within the home setting.

How robots reshape daily home life

Home appliance companies are no longer limiting their robot products to single functions; instead, they are working to develop all-around home robots capable of handling complex household chores and delivering emotional companionship, catering to various household scenarios such as cleaning, emotional support and cooking.

In the field of housekeeping and cleaning robots, Ecovacs has launched Bajie, a home service robot equipped with a sliding base and gripping arm. It can perform tasks such as organizing toys, tidying tables, and retrieving and handing over objects. Powered by VLM and a family database, it can understand the spatial relationships and ownership of objects. Meanwhile, the brand also debuted Maotuaner, an AI-powered bionic companion robot with a Maltese dog appearance and able to support multi-sensory interaction, which is now officially on sale.

Haier Smart Home has also unveiled home service robots tailored to three specific segments: cleaning, companionship and household chores. Among them, the Haiwa robot can coordinate with home appliances throughout the house to perform tasks such as transporting groceries and sorting them into storage; the cleaning robot can use its grippers to put items like toys back in their proper places before planning a route for cleaning an entire house; and the companion robot supports medication reminders, fall detection, and emergency alerts.

When it comes to companionship and caregiving, emotional interaction and safety have topped the list of priorities in product design. For example, TCL’s AiMe is the world’s first modular AI companion robot, capable of multimodal natural interaction and adapting to family members’ habits through daily learning. Similarly, Hisense’s Moii companion robot is designed specifically for child and elderly care, while its Savvy butler robot can seamlessly control home appliances and handle household chores.

In the kitchen setting, Fotile’s world-first kitchen robot has taken culinary automation to the next level. Equipped with high-precision arms, this kitchen robot achieves fully automated operation throughout the entire process – from pouring oil and stir-frying to serving dishes and post-meal cleanup.

In fact, one of the major advantages traditional home appliance makers have in entering the embodied intelligence market is their supply chain strength and accumulated expertise in applying large language models. Take Ecovacs as an example. The firm has completed its investment and begun operating five manufacturing bases in Nanxun, Zhejiang. Its battery business module achieved 250 million yuan ($36 million) in sales during the first quarter, up 50% year-on-year. On completion of its capacity expansion, its monthly capacity will double. Such supply chain capabilities can be fully replicated for its robotics business, creating a cost-efficiency advantage.

Long road to robotic homes continues

While groundbreaking robotic products continue to emerge, observers are generally cautious on the large-scale entry of embodied AI robots into households, with estimates suggesting it will still take three to five years.

A series of challenges remain to be addressed. For instance, actions that humans take for granted, such as pouring water or tying shoelaces, involve multiple intricate technologies for robots to master, like high-dimensional joint control, force feedback, and visual reasoning. Conversely, robots can easily handle tasks that humans find difficult, such as complex calculations and playing chess. Furthermore, the complex and ever-changing household environment places higher demands on robots’ adaptability.

The alignment between price and value is another critical threshold for penetration. Current prices for embodied intelligence products range from 10,000 yuan to 300,000 yuan, far higher than those for traditional home appliances. Therefore, only when prices match the value of the products they represent can robots transition from being a novelty to mass adoption. Furthermore, while Chinese consumers have a basic recognition of such products, the percentage of those with in-depth understanding of smart home robots still remains low.

Given these challenges, industry insiders generally believe that 2026 will mark the transition of humanoid robots from technical validation to mass production. However, supply chain development and technological maturity will likely still require another three to five years. Notably, the advancement is expected to evolve in four key directions: from single- to multi-function integration; from specific scenarios to serving as a central hub for whole-home smart systems; from purely utility-oriented tools to devices capable of emotional interaction; and a gradual decline in prices.

The overall trend is increasingly clear: robots are emerging as the next generation of smart devices for home use. While mass adoption will still require some time, home appliance manufacturers are steadily bringing the vision of smart home robots entering households closer to reality.

CLS Marketwatch provides insights and analysis on China’s industries. You can contact the author at liujingyi@cls.cn

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