Ecovacs has a new flagship robot vacuum, the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone, and it's all about delivering uninterrupted cleaning with minimal human intervention. Alongside the speedy top-up charging, another upgrade caught my eye: the addition of agentic AI, in the form of 'Agent Yiko'.
If you're not familiar with the term, agentic AI uses systems that can make decisions and solve problems autonomously, whereas gen-AI relies mostly on predefined guidelines.
Yiko first appeared in the Deebot robovacs as an embedded voice assistant in 2021. Yiko 2.0 arrived in 2023, with the ability to understand complex sentences. In 2024 we got Yiko GPT, which used LLMs to deliver even more intelligent cleaning... but Agent Yiko is a step up again.
Agent Yiko "proactively learns how you live" and then adapts its routines to fit around your lifestyle. Ecovacs says it'll do this without the need for daily input, but rather you "just speak naturally, and Agent Yiko gets to work".
A smoother cleaning process
I'm not totally sure I'm ready for a robovac with agency, but in a showcase at IFA 2025, a representative for the brand explained how it can be used to make interacting with your robot vacuum a smoother process. They explained that users weren't really making the most of their robovac's voice control capabilities: 80% of users repeat the same orders to their robot vacuums every day, and many don't use the voice assistant to change settings.
Ecovacs has optimized Agent Yiko for three areas – 'Start', 'Use', and 'Fix'. When you power the Deebot X11 on for the first time, an automatic walk-through kicks in, so you get used to instructing your bot using voice from the off.
The 'Use' part is probably the most interesting. If you put the Deebot X11 OmniCyclone into 'AI Agent mode', it will come up with specific recommendations for which settings to use, based on the situation it's in.
It can detect floor types, so if it knows it's going to be cleaning a wooden floor, it might suggest using less water. If you asked it to clean some rooms that require mopping and then go on to clean a carpeted room, it would suggest tackling the carpeted room first so there's no danger of dragging damp mop pads on it.
If it's cleaning the kitchen and thinks it might be greasy, it will return to its dock to pick up some heavy-duty cleaning solution (with de-greasing agent) rather than the standard solution.
Finally, Agent Yiko is meant to help you fix any issues you do run into. It'll provide real-time voice feedback with problem-solving guidance.
In reality, I think the term 'agentic' is being used quite loosely here, and we're not actually looking at a robot vacuum that's going to make truly independent decisions. The idea of a robovac that can suggest more effective cleaning routines, I'm much more on board with.
The Ecovacs Deebot X11 OmniCyclone went on sale in early September in the US and Canada, with a list price of $1,499.99 (CA$1,999.99). It's available at ECOVACS.com and Amazon in the US and Canada, plus BestBuy.com and Target.com in the US.
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