Why Dual-Form Design Matters

The Other Side of Home Floor Cleaning

Most cleaning robots are built on a single assumption: that home floor cleaning is scheduled, waitable, can be fully automated. In reality, home life is far more complex.

When we look closely at real household cleaning behavior, floor cleaning is not a single task, but a combination of two fundmentally different types of cleaning that occur simultaneously in everyday life.

Two Distinct Needs in Home Floor Cleaning

Scheduled cleaning focuses on whole-home maintenance. It typically happens one to three times per week and covers large areas of the home to maintain general cleanliness. This is where robot cleaners perform best: operating autonomously, requiring minimal intervention, and taking over repetitive maintenance tasks that users would rather not think about.

Immediate Cleaning (One-the-spot cleaning), by contrast, happens far more frequently and is often overlooked in product design. Especially for the family with a kid or a pet, these situations can occur five to eight times a day, driven by ordinary moments such as spilled milk or soda, food crumbs, footprints, and other everyday messes. What defines immediare cleaning is urgency: it can’t wait, it needs to be addressed immediately, and it often has to be cleaned thoroughly in a single pass.

Both scheduled and immediate cleaning exist in nearly every household, yet they place very different demands on cleaning tools.

Dimension	Scheduled Cleaning	Immediate Cleaning (On-the-spot Cleaning)
Purpose	Whole-home maintenance	Spot cleaning for sudden messes
Frequency	1–3 times per week	5–8 times per day (especially with kids or pets)
Typical Scenarios	General whole-home maintenance and hygiene	Urgent mess removal for spilled milk or soda, food crumbs, footprints, pet messes
Urgency Level	Low （Can be done while you are away or asleep）	High （Requires instant action to prevent stains or tracking. ）
Coverage	Large, open floor areas.	Localized, specific "hotspots."
Cleaning Nature & Expectation	Preventive, routine maintenance with autonomous operation	Reactive, time-sensitive cleaning requiring fast response
Product Strength	Robot cleaners perform best in this mode; ideal for repetitive maintenance	Often overlooked in product design despite high real-life frequency

Why Robot Cleaners Struggle With Immediate Messes

Robot cleaners have clear advantages: they operate autonomously, reduce manual effort, and handle routine cleaning effectively. However, in immediate cleaning (or on-the-spot cleaning), their limitations are obvious. Their cleaning power is limited, especially when dealing with liquids or mixed wet-dry messes. More importantly, their response time makes them unsuitable for situations that require immediate cleanup.

In real life, when a cup of coffee is spilled, almost no one turns to the cleaning robo — opening an app, reconnecting the device, rebuilding a map, and waiting for it to navigate to the mess. Instead, people instinctively choose the fastest and most reliable option: tissues, a mop, or a quick manual wipe.

Robot cleaners solve the problem of “not needing my involvement,” but they fail to solve the problem of “cleaning it right now.”

What About Wet-Dry Vacuums?

Wet-dry floor cleaners perform extremely well in immediate cleaning. They deliver strong cleaning power and high efficiency, enabling users to handle heavy spills, mixed wet-dry messes, and stubborn stains quickly and effectively. However, they come with a fundamental limitation: every cleaning task requires full human involvement from start to finish. They cannot maintain floors automatically, nor do they significantly reduce daily effort over time.

Wet-dry vacuums answer the question of "how to clean more effectively", but not "how to clean without constant involvement".

The Real Problem Isn’t Cleaning Power — It’s a Mismatch of Tools

When we step back and look at real household behavior, the issue becomes clear. The problem is not that existing products lack capability, but that home floor cleaning cannot be addressed by a single tool. Scheduled cleaning requires automation, while immediate cleaning(or the on-the-spot cleaning) demands instant response and efficient cleanin. Most products solve only one side of the problem. The rest is left to user compromise.

Why xLean TR1 Had to Be Dual-Form Design

This insight led to the creation of xLean TR1 — the world’s first dual-form transformable floor washing robot.

Instead of adding more fancy but rarely used features to traditional cleaning robots, xLean TR1 focuses on what truly matters: a useful, efficient, and practical dual-form design that matches how people actually clean their homes.

In robot form, xLean TR1 takes care of the cleaning you don’t want to think about. It handles scheduled, day-to-day or week-to-week floor maintenance automatically, keeping everyday dust and debris under control without requiring your attention. As long as it runs reliably on schedule, most users rarely think about floor cleaning at all.

In handheld form, xLean TR1 is built for moments that cannot wait. When spills or messes happen unexpectedly, it responds instantly with powerful, targeted cleaning. Heavy spills, mixed wet-dry messes, and stubborn stains are removed in a single pass — without wiping, smearing, or leaving residue behind.

By combining these two forms into one system, xLean TR1 covers both the most frequent and the most critical cleaning needs in a home. It answers two questions every user cares about:

Can it clean thoroughly?

And can it reduce my long-term involvement?

With xLean TR1, the answer to both is yes.

Simplicity for Users. Complexity for Engineers

Dual-form doesn't have to mean complicated. As long as it runs reliably on schedule, most users rarely think about floor cleaning at all.

It only takes one second to transfrom between robot form and handheld form. Just take out the handheld rod and insert it into the slot, and it locks automatically. That's it. Handheld mode is ready.

When you're done, you put it back on the base and walk away. Docking and charging happen on its own, with no extra steps. There's no installation, no setup, and no manual configuration.

Less Decision-Making. More Real-Life Help

xLean TR1 isn't designed to give you more cleaning tools. It's designed to reduce the number of decisions you have to make. You no longer have to choose between “automatic” and “powerful.” With xLean TR1, you get both.

When you don't want to think about cleaning, it works automatically.

When you can't wait, it's ready right away.