ABB Robots and Pool Robots: Built to Get Wet

Roborock's first pool robot debuted at IFA 2026. ABB's IP67 IRB 1300, washdown IRB 1200 Hygienic and food robots show how industry keeps water out of machines.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

Keeping a swimming pool clean used to mean draining it. In 1950 staff at Singapore's Mount Emily pool scrubbed the empty basin by hand with long brooms, and in between, someone skimmed leaves off the surface with a net.

Black and white photo of two men sweeping the floor of an empty swimming pool
Black and white photo of two men sweeping the floor of an empty swimming pool

Staff scrubbing the drained Mount Emily swimming pool in Singapore, 1950. Photo: Singapore Press Holdings / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first automatic cleaners arrived in the 1970s and 80s. They were simple suction units on a hose that wandered the pool floor at random, powered by the filter pump. They did the job, though they often missed corners and walls.

Suction pool cleaner connected to a white hose on the floor of a backyard pool
Suction pool cleaner connected to a white hose on the floor of a backyard pool

An automatic suction pool cleaner on its hose. Photo: Bovineone / Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

At IFA 2026 in Berlin this month, Roborock showed its first pool robot, the RockAqua P1. It cleans floors, walls, the waterline and shallow platforms, moves 6,800 gallons of water an hour through a 4-litre debris basket, and runs for up to 3.5 hours on a charge.

Black and white tracked robotic pool cleaner on a store shelf
Black and white tracked robotic pool cleaner on a store shelf

A tracked robotic pool cleaner of the kind now sold for home pools. Photo: TaurusEmerald / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Keeping water out of the electronics is the hard part, and industrial robots dealt with it first. ABB's IRB 1300 Foundry Plus 2 is sealed to IP67 against water and dust, for dirty jobs like foundries and wet machining cells.

White ABB IRB 1300 robot labelled Foundry Plus 2 working in an enclosed cell
White ABB IRB 1300 robot labelled Foundry Plus 2 working in an enclosed cell

ABB's IRB 1300 Foundry Plus 2, sealed to IP67 against water and dust. Photo: ABB

Food plants hose their equipment down every day. ABB's IRB 1200 Hygienic has an IP67 body, an IP69K stainless steel tool flange rated for pressure washing up to 30 bar, and food-grade NSF H1 oil. The IRB 390 FlexPacker packs raw meat trays at Brazilian producer Torfresma, and at the BurgerBots restaurant an IRB 360 FlexPicker stacks burger toppings, both jobs where everything gets wiped or washed down.

ABB delta robot with blue hoses picking trays of red meat on a conveyor
ABB delta robot with blue hoses picking trays of red meat on a conveyor

An ABB IRB 390 FlexPacker packing meat trays at Torfresma in Brazil. Photo: ABB

Home robots have already moved out onto lawns, and now they are going into pools. I expect the next ones to borrow from industrial sealing and washdown design, because a robot that lives in a pool or a kitchen sink has to handle water every day.

Delta robot under a BurgerBots sign above tubes of lettuce, tomato and onion
Delta robot under a BurgerBots sign above tubes of lettuce, tomato and onion

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker stacking burger toppings at BurgerBots. Photo: ABB

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