There is dirt that disappears with a vacuum cleaner. There is another one that needs water. And then there is that third category, much more stubborn, that seems to have developed an emotional bond with the floor: dried grease from the kitchen, a stain that has been there for days, remains that have stuck to the joints or that trace that no mop can completely remove. To confront her, Dreame has brought to IFA 2026 an unusual solution in a robot vacuum cleaner: steam at 180 °C.
The person responsible for this is called Aqua20 Pro Ultra Roller and represents an interesting evolution of robotic cleaning. It’s not simply about adding more power to a device that already vacuumed and mopped. The proposal consists of introducing heat into the cleaning process to first modify the dirt and then make it easier for the roller to remove it.
The operation begins with water. The robot generates steam that reaches 180 °C and expels it through four outlets. This steam acts on the stains before the roller mop comes into play, which subsequently collects the dirt with hot water. Dreame claims that the system can eliminate up to 99.999% of bacteria, although this figure should be understood as a manufacturer’s claim and not a universal guarantee of disinfection for any surface or situation.
The change is important because it introduces a variable that until now had much less prominence in robot vacuum cleaners: temperature. The industry has competed for years with figures for suction power, pressure on the mop, roller speed or ability to detect obstacles. The Aqua20 Pro Ultra Roller
Its roller also works at a speed of up to 300 revolutions per minute and exerts a pressure of 18 N on the ground (similar to the pressure that a hand can exert). And here appears another detail that may seem minor, but is quite important in the real world: the mop can extend up to 8 centimeters outwards. According to Dreame, this allows you to get close to baseboards, corners and areas that are normally out of reach of the robot’s main body. It is also twice the extension offered by its previous generation.
But the Aqua20 hasn’t forgotten the other half of its name. When you stop mopping and encounter a carpet, the system can raise and seal the wet roller to prevent water from coming into contact with it. For Collecting dry dirt has an advertised suction power of 40,000 Pa, as well as a brush system designed to reduce tangles caused by hair and fibers.
Mobility is also part of this race to ensure that the robot needs less and less human help. Dreame claims that the Aqua20 can overcome obstacles of up to 10 centimeters, which includes certain unevenness and transitions between surfaces. It is not a trivial question: For a domestic robot, a house is not a perfectly continuous plane, but a succession of small borders (thresholds, rugs, furniture legs, low steps) that can block the passage and leave areas “deserted from cleaning”.
To orient yourself, it uses the VersaLift-LDS navigation system, capable of performing 360-degree mapping and modifying its configuration to pass under low furniture. Added to this is OmniSight 4.0, Dreame’s artificial intelligence-assisted perception system, which according to the company can identify more than 320 types of objects and detect obstacles as small as 10 millimeters, it can basically detect a pea on the ground. The intention is that the robot is not limited to traveling a pre-established route, but can interpret what it finds around it and modify its behavior.
After all the work comes perhaps one of the least striking, but most important parts for a robot of this type to make sense: cleaning itself. The station can wash the mop with 100°C water. The objective is to remove the debris accumulated on the roller and keep it ready for the next session, also reducing the problem of bad odors associated with wet mops.
But perhaps the most interesting thing about the new robot is not its 40,000 Pa or even 180 °C. It’s in what those two figures represent together. Robot vacuum cleaners began as machines that followed a trajectory and collected dust. They then learned to build maps, recognize obstacles, differentiate surfaces and return to their station on their own. Now they are beginning to incorporate something more similar to a cleaning strategy: identifying the problem and choosing how to attack it.
In that sense, steam is not just another specification. It’s a sign of where home robotics can evolve. When vacuuming is no longer enough, the robot needs to understand that a speck of dust, a hair on a carpet, and a dried grease stain are not the same problem. And, therefore, they should not receive the same response either. The price clearly places the Aqua20 at the high end of the market. Dreame has announced a recommended retail price of 1,499 euros and a Launch promotion that will reduce 300 euros during the first weeks. In Spain it will be available from September 21.