The smart machine takes over the job you forget to do.

Cleaning usually happens when you notice it. A spill in the kitchen, dust building up by the window, something that finally crosses the line. The <a href="https://www.dyson.ph/spot-scrub-ai-black" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dyson Spot+Scrub AI Robot Vacuum</a> is built to get ahead of that. It moves through a home the way you would, picking up on the small, everyday mess that&rsquo;s easy to miss and taking care of it before it turns into something you have to deal with.
The thinking carries through how Dyson approaches the product as a whole. Speaking with Dyson engineer Jia Ying Teo, the focus is on making cleaning feel less like something you have to manage. It&rsquo;s a mix of dry and wet cleaning, built to adapt to different homes and habits, and designed to run in the background.

You&rsquo;ve worked on a lot of Dyson products. What makes the Spot+Scrub AI robot feel like a real step forward for you personally?
For me personally, it&rsquo;s been a gradual progression. I started with handheld vacuums, learning about cyclones, brush bars, and dry cleaning systems. Then I moved into wet products with the Submarine, and later into formulations as Dyson expanded into new categories. After that, I got more involved in AI and software, working on projects like Clean Trace. Now with robotics, everything comes together, dry and wet cleaning, formulations, and AI, which makes it much more complex. It&rsquo;s been a big challenge, especially designing for different markets like the US, the Philippines, and Japan, where conditions vary. Figuring out how one design can work across all these environments has been a key part of the development.
For someone who&rsquo;s never owned a robot vacuum, what&rsquo;s the first thing they&rsquo;ll notice that feels different about this one?
I think when you first use a robot, you don&rsquo;t immediately notice the difference. In the first few days, you&rsquo;re just learning what it can do, how it cleans, how it maps. But over time, you move into a stage where you rely on it. You come home and your floors are clean every day, and you stop reaching for a broom or a mop. Then if one day the robot isn&rsquo;t there, you really feel it. That&rsquo;s when you realize how much you depend on it.

The robot goes back to messier areas and cleans more thoroughly. How did Dyson make that feel seamless instead of complicated for users?
I think the goal was to make it more intelligent so you don&rsquo;t have to think about it. For example, if you spill coffee in the morning and don&rsquo;t notice it, the robot can detect and clean it for you. Sometimes stains sit for a few days and become harder to remove, especially in areas like the kitchen with things like soy sauce. But if a robot is cleaning every day and checking for dirt, it prevents those stains from building up. So instead of relying on multiple passes to deal with stubborn spots, the idea is that regular, intelligent cleaning keeps things from getting to that point in the first place.
Filipino homes can be a bit unpredictable, open windows, more dust, tighter spaces. How did Dyson take real homes like these into account when designing it?&nbsp;
Real home environments are always a big focus for us. In engineering, we follow what&rsquo;s called the V model, where we do verification in controlled lab settings, but also validation in real homes. That means engineers actually take prototype robots home, see how they behave, troubleshoot, and report back. We run these cycles across different types of homes, small, big, and in different markets, to make sure the product can adapt. There are always unexpected things, like different chair designs or layouts that you can&rsquo;t fully replicate in a lab, so testing in real home environments is key to getting it right.

The wet and dry cleaning in one machine feels like a big shift. When did Dyson realize that had to be part of the product?
We started to see a shift through market research. Mopping used to be seen as more of an Asian habit, but now it&rsquo;s becoming common in markets like Europe and the US as well, because vacuuming alone doesn&rsquo;t always feel fully clean. At the same time, robot vacuums are growing, and people often avoid mopping because it&rsquo;s time-consuming. So if a robot can handle both, it just makes sense. People would rather have one machine that does everything instead of just dry cleaning, and that&rsquo;s what led to combining wet and dry in one product.
A lot of people worry robot vacuums might miss spots. How did Dyson build that sense of trust into how this one cleans?
I think it comes down to testing. At Dyson, we test extensively across different stain types, home environments, and cleaning scenarios, and we repeat that with every software release. The benchmarks are very high, we&rsquo;re aiming for results like 99.9% or 99.99%, not something like 80%. A big focus during development was on the software, making sure the intelligence is properly trained before the product reaches the market, so users can trust that it won&rsquo;t miss spots.

When building something this advanced, how does Dyson decide what features to include and what to leave out?
Whenever we design a new product, the first question is always, what problem are we trying to solve? If that&rsquo;s not clear, then there&rsquo;s no reason to develop it. So a lot of the work goes into research, understanding what people actually deal with at home every day. It&rsquo;s not about adding extra features for the sake of it, but focusing on what really matters, which is cleaning well. From there, the focus shifts to cleaning performance and making sure the robot is intelligent but still easy to use, so users don&rsquo;t have to think too much about it. That&rsquo;s how we arrive at the product we have today.
What&rsquo;s one detail about the robot that most people wouldn&rsquo;t notice, but you&rsquo;re actually really proud of?
If I&rsquo;m being honest, it&rsquo;s the product design. It&rsquo;s quite different from what&rsquo;s already out there. At Dyson, there&rsquo;s always been a focus on making the technology visible, like the clear bin, so you can actually see how it&rsquo;s working, whether it&rsquo;s the dirt being collected or how the cyclone operates. That also ties into performance and sustainability, since the cyclone system maintains suction without needing bags. There are also small details, like the hands-free bin emptying, where you just press a button and the dust drops out. It&rsquo;s really about how the user interacts with the product and how it fits into the home, almost like something you wouldn&rsquo;t mind having on display.

Courtesy of Dyson.

Dyson’s Spot+Scrub AI Robot Wants to Clean Before You Notice the Mess

L'OFFICIEL PHILIPPINES APRIL 2026 - Rocio Zobel ₱600 

Dyson’s Spot+Scrub AI Robot Wants to Clean Before You Notice the Mess

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