| Thanks for the detailed feedback and thoughts. 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! |
But anyway: I do think it's worth tripling down on your "average busy person with a cluttered house" pitch. 3D mapping is a huge distraction, although I get that it's unique and your team is proud of it. You're selling the features it enables!
If your site's first content was a time lapse video of Matic navigating a living room covered in toys and charging cords that would tangle most robots, though...