Robot vacuums that can climb stairs are now officially a thing if IFA 2025 is any indication. At the Berlin tech show, Eufy announced the MarsWalker, a dang stair-climbing mech suit that your robot vacuum can wear. And Eufy plans to release it in the spring of next year, with pricing to be announced later.
Robot vacuum owners have been waiting years for a couple of things: a robot that actually does what you want with no compromises (we’re not there yet) and the ability for them to actually get up and down your stairs without you (we’re close!). A few companies have shown off stair-climbing robots before; consider the Migo Robotics Ascender, an ambitious project that can climb and clean your stairs, but that one hasn’t made it to the world yet. The closest thing to it on the market right now is the , which, admittedly, can only handle tiny steps.
Eufy’s new idea is one of the wilder—and somehow the most realistic—yet. Here’s how it worked when I saw it at IFA: a compatible Eufy robot vac (in this case, the Eufy Omni S2) and the MarsWalker each leave their respective docks, then have a robotic meet-cute where the Eufy robot slips inside the MarsWalker and they start rolling towards the stairs. As they approach the stairs they’re planning to ascend, robotic arms extend from the MarsWalker’s front and the back, and reach for the first step. On contact, the front arms raise the MarsWalker and the treads drive it forward until they touch with the step, then it just cruises on up.
I watched the MarsWalker do this over and over again on a small set of wooden stairs that only went up in one direction. But Eufy says it works fine with stairs that reach a landing and turn, either at a right angle or back in the other direction. I asked a member of Eufy’s research and development team who was on site, and he tells me the MarsWalker can potentially handle spiral staircases too, but they’d have to have a wide curve. If I get a chance to review it, I’ll try it on the spiral stairs in my own home.
I asked Eufy’s representative about the MarsWalker’s future compatibility, and he said the company plans to make other robot vacs that work with it. The device won’t be backward compatible. The rep said the company is attempting to make the Eufy Omni S1 Pro work with it as well, but it sounds like that’s far from a given.
The MarsWalker has a way to go before it can truly conquer stairs—it doesn’t clean the stairs themselves, after all. But if it works as Eufy hopes it will, this little robot can get from one floor to the next all by its onesie, saving you from having to carry your robot vacuum upstairs (which, if you’re me, you just don’t do) or buy separate vacuums for each floor. And really, it’s probably a good thing for Eufy to try to master getting up and down the stairs first before moving onto the next thing. Baby steps.<
Eufy’s robot vacuums, like many on the market today, can save multiple maps of your house so you can move them around, but with this new approach, it creates a full map of all of your floors without you having to initiate separate map-making runs for each floor.
The Omni S2 is a new robot, and a follow-up to its Omni S1 Pro self-cleaning robot vacuum with a great big tower of a cleaning base. Eufy says the Omni S2 is aimed at solving a number of issues that robot vacuums have, not just their inability to climb stairs. Those include the robots’ inability to adapt to different floor surfaces, terrible carpet performance, tendency to get their filters clogged with dust and pet hair, and the fact that even the best mop-bots can’t actually disinfect your floors.
The Omni S2, which Eufy expects to sell for $1,599 in the U.S. in January, will have 30,000Pa suction (that’s higher than the Omni E28’s 20,000Pa and way higher than the S1 Pro’s 8,000Pa), a self-cleaning mop, and can rid floors of “99.999%” of bacteria and pathogens. As it cleans, it farts out pretty smells, with the company’s presentation showing it diffusing scents like “Citrus and Basil,” “Bamboo and Sage,” and “Bergamot and Lychee.”
Also, those 3D maps I mentioned earlier? Eufy says the Omni S2, even without the MarsWalker, uses those to avoid obstacles and messes, adapting to your home as it cleans. Without the MarsWalker, the S2 can climb up to 5cm transitions to different floors. Like the S1’s dock, Eufy says the S2’s UniClean Station 2.0 can empty, wash, dry, and refill the S2 with cleaning solution for the next run.