The World’s First Robot Vacuum and Mop Reimagined to Defend Privacy of Your Home
652 karma · joined August 28, 2011
With this one, we really want to eliminate day to day use.
Imagine if you could only see just one-inch ehigh of what's in front of you -- not below or above -- then you'd un into tables or chairs all the time. Single pixel lidars are sort of like that.
In terms of size, it's ~1x1 feet and far smaller than some of the docks that come with disc bots these days.
The reason for 1 feet height is that we are giving it a same top-down vantage point that we humans have. Flat designs will give ant-like vantage point which makes seeing what's in front it rather hard.
Human like vantage point also means it builds maps that both the robot and humans can easily understand and recognize all the objects. Thanks!
Hence, we started with the premise that we shouldn't have to compromise our privacy to keep our floors clean. Thanks!
That's also why we have all-you-can-clean membership plan -- it's optional and users can purchase bags a al carte, but with it's unlimited bags. mop rolls, extended warranty, and accidental coverage it's really a great peace of mind for our users.
Our goal is to provide great customer experience first and formost with a higest quality product. Thanks!
The choice of lack of dock is deliberate one -- when we did research with our target audience -- familes and working parents with kids/pets, we realized that they actually do not like the large dock for few reasons:
1) It's ugly - family homes are very carefully decorated and most don't want the big dock in the room.
2) It's extremely loud -- again, it's a matter of preference but it's like rocket taking off every time it vacuums the vacuum. And, even the self-cleaning mopping is noisy. It still doesn't cover for the fact that it just drags dirt around between those cleaning cycles.
3) We heard from familes that they hated the smelly dirty water and did not know where to throw it.
Again, I'll refer to back to noise but for lost of pets and kids, the noise of dock and the robot are very scary. I know because my Golden hated it and my 3-year old would cry everytime the rocket took off.
Based on the response so far to pre-orders, we're very optimistic that it's resonating. Thanks!
https://www.wired.com/story/matic-robot-vacuum-first-look/
And, yes, we're starting with the US and iOS but will be adding support for both international and Android ASAP. Thanks!
It’s designed to clean visible dirt thoroughly.
Frankly, if primary use case is cleaning underneath furniture than disc robots are great already.
And Membership is more peace of mind with all-you-can-clean like unlimited bags and rolls, extended warranty, and accidental damage coverage.
Disc robots have been around for 20 years. Most are exactly the same from inside.
Also, Indoor world is designed with our vision first perception. We think robots need to be imbued with similar system. And we believe vision is enough (there’s a reason why nature chose vision based systems for us?)
Three bottlenecks in on fully autonomous indoor robots are:
1. Perception and Precise SLAM 2. Affordability 3. Privacy.
All three are feasible with Tesla like cameras only approach.
Problem with indoor robots isn’t sensors — it’s lack of brains/algorithms.
1. Yes, our core users are young families: working parents with young children and pets. Clutter and rate of entropy is just higher. :)
2. The fundamental reason for reengineering and reinventing robot floor cleaners with Matic is that disc robots are relatively inferior and suck (literally and figuratively).
Few issues that I as user encountered: 1) constantly getting stuck, chewing wires, dog toys, etc. 2) small bin size and my wife hates the big docks - she just thinks they are ugly. (People go out of their way to hide appliances behind cabinets, so why do we need to tolerate these ugly bricks. 3) Noise. Not only vacuum is noisy but docks are like rocket ship taking off - doesn’t work with pets or young kiddos. 4) Can’t get to sides and corners - circle shape. Vacuum at the bottom is literally 2 inches away from the side 5) and, can’t tell it where, what, how to clean. Most times I don’t want the whole home cleaned or whole room — I just need to clean kitchen are clean where we cook/chop veggies etc.
** However, it just doesn’t make sense to why we are tolerating these Gen 1 robots that were invented in early 2000s. They were great for that time. But they are Nokias and Blackberries. Now tech and AI is so much better, so it’s time to reinvent and build iPhone of home robots.
(200+ self driving car start-ups, same amount building industrial robots, none in home space…why?)
2. We believe that just like self-driving cars need Google Street View maps (which Sebastian Thrun built first) and GPS, fully autonomous indoor robots need precise SLAM and high fidelity 3D maps. With Matic, we are letting robots build maps on the fly and remember its location in precise manner.
3. You are right that mostly we have built table stakes features. However, the it’s about HOW we have built them. With our vision-first approach, disc robot ceiling is our floor. That’s just the foundation.
And HOW is about making robot that actually works and is intelligent.
How can we call robot intelligent if it continuously needs to bump? If it doesn’t even know what’s in front of it?
A robot that can navigate our home the way we do is in itself a huge step forward and for that it needs precise and dynamic maps (we constantly observe when things move).
We have done few things: - reinvented sweeping and vacuuming to adjust suction, brush roll speed, height of CH etc. based on type of surface and type of dirt. (We don’t take vacuums over rugs with frills and we mop wine stains - why can’t robot do that).
- first if it’s kind self-cleaning mop that doesn’t just drag dirt with it like mop pads. Instead we squeeze dirty water and dirt out the bin with every turn.
- a completely new mobility system invented for the modern homes. disc robots don’t climb shag rugs. We do.
- quiet. Vacuums at 55dBA and mops at 52dBA. This is really important for robots to do things on our behalf in homes. They can’t be noisy.
- with our ID not only families love looking at it but kids and pets are not afraid of it.
And, we are just getting started. By end of the next year we will be adding embeddings and simple chat like command/control based on visual maps.
Stay tuned!
We have everything you mention above and have HEPA bags.
We went against self-emptying because 1) those docks looks ugly - my wife calls them rocket ships and don’t want it in our home. 2) building vacuum that cleans vacuum and makes a crazy loud noise just seemed so inelegant.
Few things:
1. We have HEPA bags - each bag acts as HEPA filter.
2. We found that more than suction power, the brush roll is more import for effective sweeping and vacuuming. It picks the dirt way better… so we have designed first of its kind to hair tangle-free brush roll. It is designed to be effective on all kids of surfaces.
3. We further improve efficacy with actuating cleaning head so it adjust the height for each type of surface with diff thicknesses.
4. The HEPA bags last a month if just vacuuming and about a week if daily vacuuming and mopping. It collects both wet and dry messes. It even has version of diaper salt and charcoal powder so it doesn’t smell or get moldy.
5. But the most important is completely Vision first perception with precision 3D system so that it doesn’t get stuck, chew wires, etc.
Indoor world is entirely built by humans, for humans, to fit our vision first perception system. So we have given it a very similar perception system.
6. Private by design. It was built to work completely w/o internet connection.
We tend to measure our accuracy with loop closures and slam graph consistency over time.
Here’s the link of Matic self and exploring and building map on the fly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul...
Matic builds full matterport like 3D map just using CV. This enables Matic to Precisely navigate without bumping at all.
We have built 10x better vSLAM than the best open source lib like Orb SLAM.
AMA.
We added voice commands and gestures also so it's easier to tell it what to do when at home.
But appreciate your feedback and requirements.