Hi dataportl community!
Robots doing the chores nobody wants, and a lesson in how the best creators actually work.
Day two of IFA 2026, and if Day 1 was about ecosystems, today had a clear theme of its own, robots. Mowing your lawn, hoovering your floor, cleaning your pool.
There was close to an entire hall given over to robotic lawnmowers and robotic vacuum cleaners. Row after row of them, working their way around obstacles far more confidently than they used to.
It wasn't the sheer number that got me, it was how much better they've become at actually moving around a home. Surface changes, thresholds, small steps, that annoying lip between a kitchen tile and hallway carpet, all of it handled without much drama now. A few years back most of these things would sit at the bottom of a step and just give up. Not anymore.
That matters more for markets like the UK and most of Europe than it does for a lot of the US. American homes tend to be built with wide open floor plans and plenty of square footage to play with. Back home, houses are smaller, older, and built with far less geometric logic, split levels, odd thresholds, hallways that clearly weren't designed with robots in mind. So a machine that can actually cope with that kind of layout matters more there than it does here.
Then there were the pool robots. These have quietly turned into genuinely clever pieces of kit. A few different variations on show, including ones that can now lift themselves out of the water once they've finished, no more fishing a soggy robot out by hand.
In the afternoon I swapped chore robots for something a bit more human. A talk on the Creator Stage, Lights, Camera, Create: The Content Creator Tech Toolkit.
On the panel were Jamal Fischer (Content Creator, @dasistJay), Matti Levesque (Co-Founder & Managing Director, Slay House) and Robb Montgomery (Founder, Smart Film School).
Cameras, editing tools, the actual gear behind people who make content for a living rather than as a hobby. No fluff, just the stuff that actually matters when you're trying to build a setup that looks half professional. Given how much of this show will get filmed, cut and posted online by the exact people who were sat in that room, it felt like a fitting one to catch.
Two very different halls today. One full of things trying to get better at moving through your home. One full of people trying to get better at showing you what they saw.
More tomorrow.
Strategic Takeaway
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