The Best Robots of CES 2025

18 hours ago 5

They can scoot, flip, grab a candy bar, and lethargically leverage it into your awaiting palm. The best robots of CES 2025 didn’t show off any revolution in the mobility department, at least compared to 2024. Instead, the robotics at this year’s CES—whether they were the best or weirdest—seemed focused on acting cute for the camera.

Last year’s best bots of CES brought us humanoid models like Unitree’s H1 without a face and Enchanted Tool’s Mirokai with probably too much face. Those same robotics companies made an appearance at this year’s show with slightly improved models and—of course—the addition of AI chatbots. The smaller players weren’t alone in adding AI to bots. Samsung and TCL drew crowds with their home robots full to the brim with vision and textual AI models.

Yukai Engineering Mirumi

Murumi Gizmodo 1© Photo: Jorge Jimenez / Gizmodo

Why would you want a robot in your life? Well, because it’s so damn cute, that’s why. Yukai Engineering’s Mirumi is a tiny, hairy robot that sits in your pocketbook and stares at people around it. It doesn’t do anything else but stare, and the only sensors involved help it recognize when people are around it. You pose its arms whichever way you want for a real surprise Elf of a Shelf moment when people walk into your bedroom. With all the bots on this list proposing you need an AI-powered machine in your home to ask questions, Mirumi wants to look cute. In that way, it succeeds.

Metapet Noono

Metapet Noono Gizmodo 1© Image: Remi Lou / Gizmodo

People are still going gaga over Tombot’s Jennie labrador robot and similar fuzzy bots. Fair enough, though, why shouldn’t we have more robotic animals to scurry around our homes? Metapet showed off its Noono AI robotic pet hamster at CES 2025. Ignore the large glowing light streaming out of their noses. When you pet it, it reacts by arching its back. When it needs to recharge, you stick it in its own baby carrier-type basket.

Samsung Ballie

Ballie Gizmodo© Photo: Jorge Jimenez / Gizmodo

Ballie was one of the stars of CES 2024, but for 2025, it received a few upgrades. With an improved AI model, the ball-shaped bot can now provide more specific answers to users’ questions. The bot should also offer faster response times, which was important for a demo where Samsung reps asked Ballie to recommend some wine choices. The rolling robot still has its projector screen that allows users to interact with it, although it may still be too slow for most users who expect instant gratification. Before you ask, Samsung has not revealed anything about a potential release date nor any more information about possible pricing.

TCL AiMe

Tcl Aime Weirdest Ces© Image: Remi Lou / Gizmodo

TCL’s concept robot was much like Samsung’s Ballie except with a cute, animal-like baby head. AiMe includes three “cores” that are full of different AI models. The drive core lets it roll around, including speakers for sound. The “Baby Core” includes more AI functionality, allowing it to use AI vision and speech to interact with users. There’s a final “Mini Core” that can detach and act as an on-the-go AI connection. The demos TCL used to showcase AiMe at CES didn’t offer us a great sense of its full capabilities. Instead, we watched a baby bot roll around, blinking and offering us a taste of a future where cute bots take over.

Galbot Convenience Store Bot

Galbot Gizmodo 1© Image: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

Nvidia’s showcase at CES included a slew of demos for its new GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards. Still, the company also offered Galbot some space, using the chipmaker’s dataset for hand robotics. To show off these capabilities, Galbot had their humanoid roll over to a shelf full of candy and drinks, clamp it with its prong-shaped claws, and then ever-so-slowly drop the treat into the person’s hand. Did they get to keep their free snack? No, of course not.

Unitree Go2 Robot Dog

Unitree Robot Dog 1© Image: Remi Lou / Gizmodo

Unitree strutted out its two-legged G1 model at CES, though the robot kept motionless while we visited the robotics company’s booth. Other reporters mentioned that G1 was prone to sprint at full speed at attendees only because the control person pressed the wrong button at the wrong time. Instead, Unitree had its quadrupedal dog bot, the Go 2, perform tricks for us. The dog bot could walk on two legs, walk on its hind legs, and perform flips with a simple command. The Go 2 has an ultra-wide 4D LiDAR sensor for monitoring its environment. Even better, you can buy the little robot dog starting at $1,600. Compare that to Boston Dynamics’ similar robot dog Spot, which can cost around $74,500, and the Go2 seems much more manageable.

Jzai Mi-Mo

Jzai Mi Mo Gizmodo 1© Image: Sherr L. Smith / Gizmodo

Imagine if the Pixar lamp mascot grew spider legs and shuffled toward you on wobbly limbs. Jzai’s Mi-Mo is a six-legged table with an attached lamp, but despite any initial fear, the bot is polite enough to wave its arm at surrounding CES-goers. Mi-Mo uses multiple AI vision models to try to interact with its environment, though it’s still relatively limited in what it can do. Its current design isn’t as speedy as other crab tables like last year’s Carpentopod design, though maybe if these tables stay polite, I could entertain having one strut around my home.

Roborock Saros Z70

Roborock Arm Robovac 1© Image: Jorge Jimenez

Robovacs don’t normally draw as much excitement from the robotics crowd as they used to, but you add an arm to one, and suddenly, a device like the Roborock Saros Z70 seems novel. The Z70’s “Omnigrip” arm component is supposed to track and pick up any rogue socks on your carpet. It’s not fast, but if you or your kids are too lazy to bend over and extricate junk from your floor, Saros Z70 will do it for you.

Read Entire Article