Two former Google engineers have a product and a plan to fix robot vacuums
The Matic is an $1,800 home robot that claims to be the first fully autonomous floor-cleaning robot. | Image: Matic
The Matic is a new robot vacuum with a different approach to cleaning your floors. Built by two former Google Nest engineers, it’s designed to move around your home in the same way most humans would, processing things visually instead of spatially. It uses five RGB cameras to navigate, rather than the sensors, bumpers, and lidar tech found on most of today’s robot vacs. In theory, this makes it less prone to common robot vacuum pitfalls —such as high-pile rugs, cables, and tight spaces — because it can actually see where it’s going in real time rather than relying on a preprogrammed map. It also operates locally — with no cloud component at all. Mapping is done on the device, and it doesn’t require an internet connection to run, so your…
