You Can Now Talk and Wave at This Robot Vacuum

Matic launched a feature called Matic Cues on August 13, 2024. It adds voice and gesture control to the company's robot vacuum through a free software update that reaches all existing Matic robots. You can find it in the Matic app under Settings > Matic Cues. The Verge

Here is the interesting part about how gestures work. The robot recognizes your hand movements using cameras it already has — five of them — and processes everything on the device itself. That means no information about your gestures is sent over the internet to a remote computer. Matic's founders, both computer vision engineers who previously worked on Google Nest cameras, have been developing this gesture feature since 2017. The Verge

Voice control works a little differently. Think of it like a two-step process. First, the robot listens for the phrase "Hey Matic" using its own built-in microphone. That part happens on the robot. But once you say your actual command — "clean the kitchen," for example — that audio is sent anonymously to Google's computers, which figure out what your words mean and send instructions back. The robot has had a microphone and speaker built in since it first went on sale, because the company always planned to add voice control later. The Verge

This split approach fits with Matic's overall stance on data. The company processes maps and cleaning information on the robot itself, so details about the layout of your home stay in your home. Voice commands are the one exception, relying on Google's cloud service to understand what you are asking for.

Matic came out of stealth in November 2023 with $30 million in funding to launch what it calls "the first home cleaner that communicates." Matic Robots The robot uses cameras to navigate, rather than the laser sensors most other robot vacuums rely on. It can tell the difference between a rug and tile, vacuuming one and mopping the other, while avoiding obstacles like toys, cables, and pet paws. Matic says the robot can map a 3,000-square-foot home in under 20 minutes with no tidying needed beforehand. Matic Robots

The company's founders, described as two busy fathers with decades of engineering experience, frame the mission as solving families' everyday problems with robots. That origin story is visible in Matic's blog, "Floor Plan: The Matic Blog," which features posts including "The $60 Million Bet That What Comes After Roomba is…Matic," "Privacy Isn't a Feature. It's Why We Built Matic," and "Inside Matic's 7-Year Journey To Create Vision-Only Robots." Matic Robots

Matic offered its robot at $1,245, with a planned price increase to $1,495 on September 9, 2024. The purchase includes a 6-month trial with a full refund if the customer is not satisfied, free shipping both ways in the lower 48 United States, and a 1-year warranty with U.S.-based support. The Verge

The company has continued shipping software updates since the Cues launch. On August 6, 2026, Matic released Stable 171, which makes path planning between rooms up to 2× faster. Matic Robots

The broader context here is that Matic competes in the premium robot vacuum market, where companies try to stand out through better mapping, smarter obstacle avoidance, and improved mopping. Most high-end robot vacuums use laser sensors to navigate. Matic's decision to rely on cameras instead, combined with five cameras and now gesture and voice control, puts the company on a different technical path. Running gesture recognition on the robot itself while sending voice commands to Google's cloud is a practical choice: the part that needs to feel instant stays local, and the harder task of understanding language uses cloud computers that Matic does not need to build itself.

In this author's view, the privacy story deserves a closer look. Matic has built its identity around keeping data on the device, and the gesture feature fully honors that promise. Voice control is more complicated. The wake word is detected locally, but your actual commands do travel to Google's cloud. Matic says the data is sent anonymously, which helps, but anyone weighing Matic's privacy claims should know that voice commands leave the home. The fact that the robot already has a microphone and speaker built in suggests that fully local voice control may be coming eventually. Until then, the current approach is a reasonable middle ground, but it is a compromise rather than a fully private system.

The price increase from $1,245 to $1,495, timed shortly after the Cues launch, puts Matic firmly in the premium category. Whether voice and gesture control are worth that price depends on how well they work in real homes with varying light, clutter, and noise. The five-camera system and seven years of development suggest the engineering is solid. The question for buyers is whether talking to and waving at a robot vacuum is something they genuinely want at that price, or a novelty that fades after the first week.