| I've used three generations of vacuum robots, with the latter two being Valetudo-supported: * Eufy RoboVac 11 (no lidar, the "stumble around triggering front bumper" locomotion) * Dreame Z10 Pro (lidar, base station vacuum emptying, mop attachment) * Dreame L10s Ultra (lidar/camera, base station vacuum emptying plus clean/waste water for integrated mopping) I root a second a vacuum for my partner's place, but past that it's very hard to recommend a Valetudo setup to someone remote who doesn't have the technical skills to do the rooting and install procedure. So the Matic is potentially appealing to me, even if I never end up using one myself. Looking at the Matic page: I think this is aimed at people with very cluttered houses, i.e. folks with young kids? The implicit pitch here seems to be, "it doesn't matter how cluttered your house is; this little robot can get in there to clean without tangling". Except... that's never made explicit? It's just a lot of photos of very cluttered spaces. I'm left to connect the dots. Customers aren't going to care about "Real-time 3D floor mapping" or "Cutting-edge vision software". They want "Won't trip over your (sometimes literal) shit". Vacuum feature wise, it seems like table stakes and not much past that? I only just upgraded to the L10s Ultra, which has a larger base station that includes two water containers--one for clean water, and one for waste water. The robot returns to the base station to cycle water and clean the mop pads every X square meters (configurable). This does such a better job actually mopping, compared to the Z10 Pro's mop attachment. It lifts the mop pads when it crosses carpet, so it can even mop the other side of large area rugs that fill rooms. I suspect the Matic's mopping will be only marginally okay, especially with no mechanism to automatically clean the mop pad? Rubber roller seems to be common on newer robots too. Having a charger-only base station seems really limiting (versus emptying on-robot waste into a larger bag on the base station itself). I picked up a second L10s Ultra for my partner's place for $630 during the black friday period, so price-wise it's going to be an uphill battle. Honestly, though, I don't think people willing to pay $1k for a cleaning device are all that price sensitive. I'm trading money for convenience, and I would absolutely trade more money for more convenience if I clearly understood the convenience on offer. Lack of Home Assistant integration makes it a no-go for me personally, as a technical user, but I realize the average person isn't going to care (and probably you shouldn't either). If you did want to support Home Assistant, I think the shortest path would be MQTT support. You don't need to do a custom integration. It's fully discoverable and automatic if you adhere to their expected structure: https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/vacuum.mqtt/ Anyway, no idea if any of that is useful, especially since "nerdy person who roots consumer hardware" isn't exactly your target market, but maybe something in that brain dump is useful info! |
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!