Almost every robot vacuum can mop these days, but not all do it equally well. Old, dried-on stains are a challenge even for the robots that use spinning mops or mop rollers with downward pressure. This is something that Shark hopes to tackle with its new PowerDetect UV Reveal. It's a robot vacuum that uses UV light and an RGB camera to detect dried stains and more forceful scrubbing to clean them.
Yes, that's right. It puts your floors under a blacklight to see how gross they are.
"We heard from consumers with robot vacuums that they were never sure if the job was done or what had been cleaned," said Andy Sundberg, VP of marketing at SharkNinja. "That's why we created PowerDetect UV Reveal. By uncovering hidden messes and showing exactly how they're cleaned, it gives customers the visibility and assurance that their floors don't just look clean -- they are clean."
Better detection and more forceful scrubbing
Your floors may look clean in regular light, but Shark's UV Reveal will show you the truth and spend extra time cleaning the gross spots. Shark
The UV light is visible as the robot cleans and seeks stains and should light up the mess. The UV Reveal can detect and clean spills, juices, sweat and pet accidents. Shark says the robot uses a more deliberate scrubbing motion, which it calls Hypersonic Mopping, to focus on that spot, with seven times the scrubbing motion of the Shark RV2820WD and twice improved stain removal compared with the Dreame X40 Ultra.
Interestingly, the UV Reveal uses a traditional flat mopping pad rather than a spinning mop or track roller, as we've seen on newer robot vacuums. During CES 2026, I spoke with the Shark team about the UV Reveal and why they chose a flat mopping pad over another design.
"We've tested roller mops, spinning mops, all of it," said Ryan Hruska, SVP of product development, robotics, SharkNinja. "We chose this flat pad because it delivers the best on our cleaning protocol due to constant contact and scrubbing. It delivers that best-in-class performance we're looking for."
Sunberg pointed out to me that the reason Shark uses rollers in wet and dry vacuums is that their purpose is to clean hard floors and larger messes, while the UV Reveal is focused on stain cleaning, dry cleaning and wet mopping of hard floors.
The UV Reveal has all the key navigation and object avoidance features you expect, while still detecting messes. Shark
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