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Roborock
Roborock G10s is an exclusive partnership collaboration between Roborock and Pininfarina. G10s uses advanced LiDAR sensor, Carpet climbing technology, 4D obstacle navigation and much more industry revolutionizing features. This design has been the best selling model in China currently.
Project With
Date
2022
Members
Wen KunYuan (Designer)
Silvio Consentino (Director)
Cammy Zheng (Designer)
Aton Xu (Designer)
Responsibilities
Lead Designer
Product Designer
Product Engineering Assistance
Prototype
All Images and Videos © kunyuanwen
I. Background
Roborock is a leading pioneer in China’s robot vacuum market, holding over 20% share and building strong customer loyalty through advanced mapping and effective cleaning. For its next generation, Roborock approached us to design a concept that positions the brand within an intelligent home ecosystem, focusing on user experience and unique product value.
II. Market Landscape
Younger brands like Narwal focus on aesthetic to attract young consumers in the market, while more dominant player like Kovacs focuses on its "high-premium" branding effect. In this increasingly competitive market, Roborock's product positioning is important to differentiate themselves.
One dominant player: Ecovacs
Emerging force: Narwal
Two strong contenders: Xiaomi / Roborock
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Industry concentration keeps rising: The Top‑5 share has increased year by year—76 % to 83 % to 86 %.
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Three leading brands continue to grow: Ecovacs, Roborock, and Narwal are all posting sustained sales growth and expanding market share.
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New brand Narwal is surging: Debuted in 2019, ranked 4th in the sector in 2020, and climbed to 2nd place in 2021.
Strategy: To enter the ￥4000+ market we have to offer more than just the base station. The pricing for the next version should be on automatic base station + robot design.
III. Consumer Analytics
As part of our research & development for ROBOROCK G10s, our team partnered with SAS International (British Data and A.I Research company) to conduct mass-interview in the greater china (including Hongkong) area. Over 10,000 participants were involved in the study and we are glad to present some of the research here.
Insights in consumer behavior 01:
Most of the user purchase vacuum robot to “free their hand”. The robot must excel in conditioning the home without supervision. Most home-wife also reportedly said vacuum robots are like their “assistant”, therefore, we would focus on enhancing vacuuming, wet-mopping and self-washing features
Insight 2：Impact of housing preference to purchasing decision
Our study revealed an interesting insight: Majority (~65%) of the vacuum robot was purchased 0-1 year of relocating into a new home with roughly 30% accounting to newly purchased or rented apartment. This means that users generally thinks about purchasing a robot vacuum when they thought about moving to a new place.
A futher analysis on the robot vacuuming pattern shows a crucial pain point: Robot tends to struggle when switching between zones, especially in small tight zones between balcony.
Robot Concept
To combat this, we need an ability for the robot to manuver 2mm step between the balcony connection to indoor. This involves the robot moving slightly.
Base Station Concept
Based on our research, 70% of the user would consider buying the product, if we offer 2 hours of service to go to their house and adjust their cabinet so it hides underneath. From a marketing perspective, this would cost us an average of 60 RMB per visit, but would increase our potential users by 20-30% percentage.
Interestingly, for doorsteps less than 2cm height, users are 15% more receptive to the 2 hour free in-house maintainence service. Roughly about 44% of the user would prefer this option. If more than 2cm, over 51% of the user feel like its impossible. However, instead of changing the height of the doorstep rail, why don’t we design a robot that can hop over the obstacle?
Design System Map:
The diagram illustrates our problem-solving logic. We identified two main pain points: frequent container changes and robots getting stuck at doorsteps. To address these, we proposed four concepts—direct-drain design, VibraRise, and steam mop—enhancing overall user experience.
Design & Engineering
The highlight of this project is the base station. We began with a direct-drain system, since users often place vacuums near bathrooms or balconies to empty containers—yet the manual process is time-consuming. Our design connects the station directly to a drain, with separate liquid, detergent, and solid waste containers to prevent clogging. To support installation, we envisioned a premium two-hour cabinet setup service.
Because over 50% of users have doorsteps, robots risk getting stuck on balconies. To solve this, we integrated VibraRise, enabling the robot to climb small obstacles. These features deliver the G10’s superior user experience.
IV. Product Concept
In an increasingly compact home environment, products that takes up large amount of space becomes an hinderence. With this in mind, we focus on designing Roborock flagship vaccum cleaner with three element in mind. With the base station, we focused on “modularity” and “compactness”, the ability to seperate stained liquid, solid waste and detergent in one modular and compact base.
One study that we conducted is to simulated the real-world environment of how user would dispose stained water and change detergent water. When direct-drain system is not available, most user would choose to open the lid and pull out the container.
After exploring all the possible methods, we all like the Top Pull Style because visually, it makes the base station looks smaller by having less vertical height, and exposing the station creates an visual intuitive action to pull the container out directly.
V. Robot
The original techpack given to us by the engineer is in a rectangular bottom + circular body shape. Althought having this shape is beneficial to have more efficient cleaning, in general, bigger brush at the rear and access to L shape corner cleaning. But this shape would be hard to dock inside the station. We communicated with the engineers and move the PCB shape, that primarily takes the back, to the center middle, moved the dust-container to the back and changed the brush to the center. This was the space is optimize the same as it was before.
Reactive AI 2.0
Roborock G10 Reactive AI 2.0 detects furnitures even at night. It has ability to detect more than 26 different objects and actively map the location and store it in its memory. The use of LiDAR vision camera allows futher obstacle collision control, and captures even the smallest change of surface in the terrain to avoid tipping.
Rear Mop
At the rear of the G10s Model, we designed an vibrating supersonic mop that vibrates over 3000 times per minute. The mop removes the most subtle and rigorous stains on the floor.
DualBrush Motor™
The use of dual brush motor, one in the center and one at the top left provides cleaning in two different scenarios. The top rear brush cleans the edges of of the house, in areas that can not be easily reached, the overall efficiency of the cleaning is tested to be 95% conducted in the Roborock testing center*.
When directed over objects, G10s would recognize the individual objects and pay attention to the peripheral. It would then re-calculate the optimal path to evade.
VI. Base Station
The docking station is the major highlight of the design. In order to prevent clogging, we designed an centrifugal wastebin isolating system that splits “stained water (left)”, “solid waste (right)” into different containers. The container in the middle is the “detergent water” container, that user can choose to refil. One benefit of our docking station, is that we want to offer options to connect directly to the home drainage system, so that the waste and clean water can be automatically refilled.
VII. Launch on Market
Final Rendering is re-completed on KeyShot and generated through Gemini 3.5. We tested the possibility to combined AI generated images with pre-rendered scenery.
When purchased a G10sPro, Roborock will provide 2 hours of cabinet customization service for free. This service would include modular design to the drain-sinkage system, which means that the base station can be completely automated.
VibraRise closes the hurdle that robot vacuums used to be trapped between doorsteps, the new design allows the robot to travel effortlessly, and allow robot to manuver in and out between spaces.
Special Note:
Thanks to Roborock China. All images are posted with permission and should not be distributed without permission. Data used are modified for confidentiality purposes.
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