Show HN: Matic: A reimagined robot vacuum that actually works
matician.com
We wanted to live in an always clean home but were tired of always cleaning.
We’d spend hours cleaning, but with kids and pets, the floors never stayed clean for long. We tried all the various robovacs, but they actually made things worse. They chewed up wires, got lost searching for the dock, and one even tore up an expensive rug after getting stuck on it for an hour!
And we weren’t the only ones — friends and family had similar frustrations. So we decided to build something new from the ground up. Something that would just… work.
As it turns out, robovacs are chock-full of sensors. Some actually boast about this in their marketing, leading customers to believe that sensors mean sophistication. But we live in homes built by humans and for humans, and humans don’t have Lidar or radar. Instead, we have an incredibly powerful perception system: two eyes and a brain. So, we decided to build a robot that sees like a human, so it can clean like a human.
We gave the robot eyes (RGB cameras) and built its brain (state-of-the-art algorithms). We developed a simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) system from scratch, enabling the robot to build a photo-realistic 3D map of a home, move around with precision, and always be able to locate itself. Visual input also meant we could develop semantic understanding, so the robot actually understands what should be cleaned and what should not be cleaned.
And we doubled down on privacy along the way. From day one, we committed to processing all data on the device, so that no video or audio ever leaves our home. This was hard to do, but it was simply non-negotiable. We shouldn’t have to sacrifice privacy for convenience.
And we didn’t stop with the software. We also built purposeful hardware to take full advantage of the powerful perception system, working together to optimize cleaning. This meant reinventing the vacuum and mopping system from the bottom up and tightly integrating hardware and software for super-effective cleaning.
It took some time to get here (5 years, 6 months to be precise), but we’re proud of what we’ve built in Matic. We are super excited for you to use Matic yourself and genuinely hope it makes chasing that “always clean” feeling a little more effortless.
We look forward to your feedback and questions.