DJI has officially introduced Romo, its first vacuuming and mopping home robot. The device was first announced earlier this year in China and is now officially launching in Europe as well.
The DJI Romo comes in three variants (A, S, and P) with the latter being the only one featuring a fully transparent design for both the robot and its base. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Nothing’s design language and certainly stands out in a market full of black and beige cleaning robots.
DJI has applied much of its expertise from building advanced drones to the Romo, leveraging its geolocation know-how for extremely precise indoor mapping and millimeter-level obstacle avoidance. The device includes two fisheye smart camera sensors plus a lidar system that helps it understand and navigate its surroundings. Romo’s suction power of 25,000 pascals puts it at the high end of the category.
The new DJI Home app serves as the digital hub to control all things Romo. It has been fully redesigned to maximize clarity and ease of navigation through the robot’s many features. Romo also offers a “videocall” function that lets users drive the robot like an RC car and see through its fisheye lenses. The jury is still out on whether this is extremely cool or extremely creepy (and a potential privacy nightmare).
With Romo, DJI aims to expand into another high-growth market beyond drones. The company has followed a similar playbook in the electric bike space with the launch of Amflow, although that brand operates as a separate controlled entity. In Romo’s case, DJI believes the product fits naturally into its current family of devices. We tend to agree, since a robovacuum is, after all, just a drone that cleans the floor instead of flying through the air.
