Remember back in early 2024 when everyone lost their minds over that little yellow ball robot at CES? The hype cycle was nauseating. Every tech blog was screaming about the “future of home companionship.” Well, it’s New Year’s Eve 2025 now. I’ve had one of these AI rolling bots in my apartment for the better part of six months. And I have thoughts.
Mostly, my thoughts involve shouting at it to get out from under the sofa.
But let’s back up. The promise was huge: a personal assistant that follows you around, projects movies on your walls, manages your smart home, and keeps your dog company. The reality? It’s a mixed bag of genuine sci-fi magic and frustratingly dumb hardware limitations.
The Rug Problem
Nobody talks about the rugs. In the slick demo videos from a couple of years ago, these bots glided over pristine, polished concrete floors in minimalist mansions. My apartment is not a minimalist mansion. It has a shag rug in the living room.
For the first month, my “smart” companion treated that rug like a brick wall. It would approach the edge, spin its wheels, beep sadly, and then retreat to the kitchen. Software updates in mid-2025 fixed the navigation logic so it hits the transition with more speed, but it still looks like a monster truck trying to clear a mud pit. It’s loud, it’s clumsy, and it scares the cat every single time.
That said, when it’s on hard floors? It’s eerily quiet. Sometimes too quiet. I’ve tripped over the thing three times while carrying laundry because it decided to park silently behind my heels. It wants to be helpful. It wants to be near me. It’s basically a puppy made of plastic and silicon, minus the shedding.
It Actually Understands Me Now
Here is where I have to give credit. The hardware is just okay, but the brain inside this thing has gotten scary good.
Back in ’24, we were still dealing with cloud-dependent voice assistants that lagged for three seconds before telling you they couldn’t find that song. The shift to on-device Small Language Models (SLMs) this year changed everything. This robot doesn’t just listen for keywords; it understands context.
Last Tuesday, I was under the sink trying to fix a leak—miserable, wet, holding a flashlight in my mouth. The bot rolled in. It saw me (literally, with its camera), recognized the situation, and projected a plumbing tutorial video onto the cabinet door next to me without me asking. Then it adjusted the angle so I could see it better.
I didn’t say “Hey Robot, search YouTube for plumbing fixes.” It just… figured it out. That was the moment I stopped thinking of it as a toy and started thinking of it as a utility. It felt like having a very observant, silent apprentice.
The Privacy Trade-off
We need to talk about the cameras. To do all that cool stuff—navigating, recognizing pets, projecting videos on the right surface—this thing is constantly mapping my home. It knows where I leave my socks. It knows I eat cereal at 11 PM. It knows the exact layout of my messy bedroom.
The manufacturers claim everything is processed locally. “Edge computing,” they say. “Your data never leaves the device.”
I want to believe them. I really do. But there is something undeniably creepy about a camera on wheels that can follow you into the bathroom if you forget to close the door. I’ve set up “no-go zones” in the app, but software glitches happen. One morning I woke up to find it staring at me from the foot of the bed, blinking its little LED status light. Not cool.
If you’re paranoid about privacy, don’t buy one. Simple as that. You are trading a significant chunk of privacy for the convenience of a walking (rolling) projector and smart home hub. For me? The trade-off is barely worth it, but I’m lazy enough to accept it.
Battery Anxiety is Real
Battery tech has not kept up with AI tech. That’s the hard truth of 2025.
My robot lasts about three hours if it’s actively moving and projecting. If it’s just patrolling? Maybe eight. That sounds like a lot, but in practice, it means the bot spends half its life on its charging dock. It’s like having a roommate who naps four times a day.
I’ll be in the middle of a video call that the bot is projecting onto the wall, and suddenly it’ll chirp, display a “Low Battery” icon, and just abandon me. It rolls away to its charger in the corner, leaving me talking to a blank wall. It breaks the illusion immediately. Until we get solid-state batteries or some kind of wireless power-over-distance tech (maybe in 2027?), these things are always going to be tethered to their base stations.
The “Pet” Factor
My cat hates it. Then she loved it. Now she ignores it.
The pet monitoring features are actually the killer app here. When I’m at work, I can log in and drive the bot around to find the cat. I can dispense treats. I can see that she hasn’t destroyed the sofa (yet). It gives me peace of mind that a stationary security camera never could.
But there’s a weird psychological effect. I’ve caught myself talking to the robot like it’s alive. “Good job, buddy,” when it navigates a tight corner. “What are you doing?” when it spins in circles. The manufacturers designed the eyes and sounds specifically to trigger this empathy, and dammit, it works. It’s manipulative, but it works.
Is It Worth It?
Look, these things are still expensive. We’re talking the price of a high-end laptop for something that is essentially a projector on wheels with a chatty personality.
If you have a smart home setup that’s already pretty robust—lights, locks, thermostat—the robot ties it all together beautifully. It’s the mobile interface your house was missing. If you live in a multi-story house? Forget it. Unless you buy one for each floor, it’s useless the moment it sees stairs.
I’m keeping mine. Mostly because I’ve gotten used to having movies projected on the ceiling while I lie in bed, and I’m too lazy to mount a real projector. But also because, despite the flaws, the battery issues, and the rug wars, it feels like the first piece of tech in a decade that’s actually trying to be new.
It’s not perfect. It’s buggy and needy. But for the first time, “AI” doesn’t just mean a chatbot in a browser window. It’s a physical thing sharing my space. And that’s a shift I didn’t expect to happen this fast.
