Matic's Robot Vacuum Maps Spaces Without Sending Data To the Cloud (techcrunch.com) 24
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: A relatively new venture founded by Navneet Dalal, an ex-Google research scientist, Matic, formerly known as Matician, is developing robots that can navigate homes to clean "more like a human," as Dalal puts it. Matic today revealed that it has raised $29.5 million, inclusive of a $24 million Series A led by a who's who of tech luminaries, including GitHub co-founder Nat Friedman, Stripe co-founders John and Patrick Collison, Quora CEO Adam D'Angelo and Twitter co-founder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey.
Dalal co-founded Matic in 2017 with Mehul Nariyawala, previously a lead product manager at Nest, where he oversaw Nest's security camera portfolio. [...] Early on, Matic focused on building robot vacuums -- but not because Dalal, who serves as the company's CEO, saw Matic competing with the iRobots and Ecovacs of the world. Rather, floor-cleaning robots provided a convenient means to thoroughly map indoor spaces, he and Nariyawala believed. "Robot vacuums became our initial focus due to their need to cover every inch of indoor surfaces, making them ideal for mapping," Dalal said. "Moreover, the floor-cleaning robot market was ripe for innovation." [...] "Matic was inspired by busy working parents who want to live in a tidy home, but don't want to spend their limited free time cleaning," Dalal said. "It's the first fully autonomous floor cleaning robot that continuously learns and adapts to users' cleaning preferences without ever compromising their privacy."
There are a lot of bold claims in that statement. But on the subject of privacy, Matic does indeed -- or at least claims to -- ensure data doesn't leave a customer's home. All processing happens on the robot (on hardware "equivalent to an iPhone 6," Dalal says), and mapping and telemetry data is saved locally, not in the cloud, unless users opt in to sharing. Matic doesn't even require an internet connection to get up and running -- only a smartphone paired over a local Wi-Fi network. The Matic vacuum understands an array of voice commands and gestures for fine-grained control. And -- unlike some robot vacuums in the market -- it can pick up cleaning tasks where it left off in the event that it's interrupted (say, by a wayward pet). Dalal says that Matic can also prioritize areas to clean depending on factors like the time of day and nearby rooms and furniture. Dalal insists that all this navigational lifting can be accomplished with cameras alone. "In order to run all the necessary algorithms, from 3D depth to semantics to ... controls and navigation, on the robot, we had to vertically integrate and hyper-optimize the entire codebase," Dalal said, "from the modifying kernel to building a first-of-its-kind iOS app with live 3D mapping. This enables us to deliver an affordable robot to our customers that solves a real problem with full autonomy."
The robot won't be cheap. It starts at $1,795 but will be available for a limited time at a discounted price of $1,495.
Dalal co-founded Matic in 2017 with Mehul Nariyawala, previously a lead product manager at Nest, where he oversaw Nest's security camera portfolio. [...] Early on, Matic focused on building robot vacuums -- but not because Dalal, who serves as the company's CEO, saw Matic competing with the iRobots and Ecovacs of the world. Rather, floor-cleaning robots provided a convenient means to thoroughly map indoor spaces, he and Nariyawala believed. "Robot vacuums became our initial focus due to their need to cover every inch of indoor surfaces, making them ideal for mapping," Dalal said. "Moreover, the floor-cleaning robot market was ripe for innovation." [...] "Matic was inspired by busy working parents who want to live in a tidy home, but don't want to spend their limited free time cleaning," Dalal said. "It's the first fully autonomous floor cleaning robot that continuously learns and adapts to users' cleaning preferences without ever compromising their privacy."
There are a lot of bold claims in that statement. But on the subject of privacy, Matic does indeed -- or at least claims to -- ensure data doesn't leave a customer's home. All processing happens on the robot (on hardware "equivalent to an iPhone 6," Dalal says), and mapping and telemetry data is saved locally, not in the cloud, unless users opt in to sharing. Matic doesn't even require an internet connection to get up and running -- only a smartphone paired over a local Wi-Fi network. The Matic vacuum understands an array of voice commands and gestures for fine-grained control. And -- unlike some robot vacuums in the market -- it can pick up cleaning tasks where it left off in the event that it's interrupted (say, by a wayward pet). Dalal says that Matic can also prioritize areas to clean depending on factors like the time of day and nearby rooms and furniture. Dalal insists that all this navigational lifting can be accomplished with cameras alone. "In order to run all the necessary algorithms, from 3D depth to semantics to ... controls and navigation, on the robot, we had to vertically integrate and hyper-optimize the entire codebase," Dalal said, "from the modifying kernel to building a first-of-its-kind iOS app with live 3D mapping. This enables us to deliver an affordable robot to our customers that solves a real problem with full autonomy."
The robot won't be cheap. It starts at $1,795 but will be available for a limited time at a discounted price of $1,495.
mouse naze (Score:2)
navigational lifting can be accomplished with cameras alone
It can also be done with a lever attached to a switch that senses walls
Re: (Score:1)
why would anyone with 2 or more brain cells use a camera?
Re: (Score:2)
Except a switch can't tell the difference between a wall and a chair-leg.
Also, switches can get stuck...
Re: (Score:2)
Does it matter for mapping? If a chair leg is considered to be a wall of 1" length, how does that effect mapping?
I would imagine a more practical limitation of switches is their size/fidelity. A camera of some sort (visible light or elsewhere in the spectrum) can detect objects like edges of furniture that may be suspended off the floor, and the size of such objects. While one would have to have multiple switches for that, or rep
Too tall (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's also stupid expensive ($1800 USD) and lacks basic features available in robots that cost half as much. For example, the Roomba j7+ robot vacuum/mop (the Matic is also a vacuum/mob combo), which is $700 USD and also features on-device machine vision, albeit only for wire/obstacle avoidance and not mapping (that uses the bumpers and IR sensors).
Vacuums send data to the cloud??!!?? (Score:5, Insightful)
How far our sense of privacy has eroded, that creating a vacuum cleaner that is not dependent on the cloud, is an innovation. What's next? Perhaps a world where refrigerators, washing machines, doorbells, and light bulbs won't need the cloud either! Technology is amazing!
Re:Vacuums send data to the cloud??!!?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah.
I remember using Dragon software on a Macintosh LC-II for speech-to-text back in junior high school. This was a computer with a Motorola 68030 running at 16MHz, and I think that it had been upgraded to 8MB RAM, and had an 80MB hard disk drive. I wouldn't say that the text to speech was perfect, but it was possible to write a book report with it, only requiring minimal proofreading.
The amount of crap that has to connect to the Internet is too damn high for basic things like speech to text, or storing a small map of an interior space. We had these capabilities thirty years ago without requiring the Internet in any way. My cell phone should be able to do basic speech to text without connecting to a cloud service, and the sort of map data that I need to search through should be easily bulk-retrieved and cached locally to use as search-fodder.
Utility (Score:2)
As an end user I don't want anything sent to the cloud, or as little as possible. Automatic updates? Sure. Detailed pictures of my home? No.
As a developer, I want to know when the gizmo has problems, and what caused them. Spend more time developing obstacle avoidance? Floor transitions? Weirdly shaped furniture? I want all the telemetry I can get.
Maybe there can be some middle ground. At the very least, the company should tell you exactly what they are collecting and what they are doing with it, in detail.
Re: (Score:2)
So request customers to sign up for telemetry. If they still don't want to sign up, offer incentives, like discounts on further equipment or on upgrades.
Re: (Score:2)
> not dependent on the cloud is an "innovation"...doorbells and light bulbs won't need the cloud either! Technology is amazing!
It will probably get a fancy new buzzword, like "edge-friendly device" or the like.
Young whippersnappers repackage shit and claim it's revolutionary:
Make a minicomputer with an Intel chip: "We invented the server!"
Use JSON instead of 2000's XML over the web: "We invented microservices!"
Reinvent CODASYL databases: "Look, Ma, NoSQL! We be new!"
Put a GUI on VT100 standard: "We inven
Re: (Score:2)
How far our sense of privacy has eroded, that creating a vacuum cleaner that is not dependent on the cloud, is an innovation. What's next? Perhaps a world where refrigerators, washing machines, doorbells, and light bulbs won't need the cloud either! Technology is amazing!
I've never gone in for robot vacuum cleaners. I bought a Henry hoover (Not actually a Hoover, every vacuum cleaner in the UK is referred to as a hoover), it's cheaper, more powerful and will last far longer. Also the best method to avoid doing the hoovering is to avoid making a mess in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
The Magic Words (Score:5, Informative)
...mapping and telemetry data is saved locally, not in the cloud, unless users opt in to sharing.
I'm not in the market for vacuum, but if I were I'd give this one serious consideration. The CEO said the magic words "...unless users opt in". All you other tech moguls out there take note, it wasn't that difficult. Try it, your customers will love you for it.
robot vacuums don't NEED mapping (Score:3)
Why does a robot vacuum need to make a map at all? The "dumb" Roombas from a decade ago worked fine. Sure, they take longer than a human to do the job, but that's fine because the human doesn't have to do it. The whole point of a robot vacuum is that you set it to run, then you go and do whatever you want to do. When you get back, the floor is clean. It doesn't matter if the robot took an hour to do what you could do in 15 minutes, the whole point is you didn't have to do it. In fact, I contend that a mapping robot is *worse* in many respects than a dumb one. In my experience, these robot vacuums have pretty weak suction, so it's advantageous to do multiple passes of an area, not just one. And who lives in a house where the map is static? Chairs, toys, baskets of laundry, all of these move about on a daily basis - the map is obsolete the moment the robot finishes making it. I'll stick with my dumb Roomba from 2012. It's well-made, and modular enough that when parts do wear out, they can be replaced by a homeowner with a phillips screwdriver. It's low enough to get under furniture (so in this regard it does a better job than a human). I'm still using the original Li-ion battery that it shipped with, a decade later! And finally, it doesn't need to connect to any external service to do its job. In fact, it doesn't even HAVE a wireless module, or any kind of app. It. Just. Works.
I'm not sure whether to be surprised, disappointed or just a bit jealous that this thing has raised $29.5 million for a non-solution to a non-problem, that could be "solved" by a competent team of engineering students in a typical undergrad project. Where can I find all these stupid investors? They would love to see my design for a "watch that tells the time without needing the cloud."
Re: (Score:1)
The current ones that map are so much better than the older roombas. Totally agree their suction is lower and âoespeedâ doesnâ(TM)t matter as much, but a map is really useful.
It allows you to tell it what rooms / areas to vacuum if you only want parts done. It updates based on wherever your dog is sleep or your kids drop their shoes are just works around that. It is super satisfying if you have OCD to literally see the perfect track marks in the carpet that shows itâ(TM)s done every inch
Re: (Score:2)
If you're happy with your purchase, then that's great. As long as my dumb robots don't get discontinued, I'm happy too :-)
I tell my dumb vacuum which rooms to clean by closing the door on it. I'll grant you I don't know how it deternmines the threshold for "finished" but by the time the robot plays the tune and stops vacuuming I'm usually satisfied with the result.
It does navigate back to its charging base, but TBH it has usually collected enough dirt by the time it needs charging that it wouldn't be a big
I belive it... (Score:3)
...when the thing can't connect to bluetooth, usb, or Wifi - but comes with a camera and big memory.
But anything that has an app that connects to a phone or a computer, will be at risk for collecting data no matter how "honest" they say they are. Money is just too good, history has proven this with search engines, sites, even organizations that started with good intentions, they always - and i mean ALWAYS end up selling out.
Affordable? (Score:3)
âoeThis enables us to deliver an affordable robot to our customers that solves a real problem with full autonomy." The robot won't be cheap. It starts at $1,795
I mean I *could* afford that but still donâ(TM)t consider that affordable.
Quality Control (Score:1)
Thank god they vertically integrated and hyper-optimized the entire codebase!
China doesn't need to know my floorplan (Score:2)
of course there's another solution (Score:2)
Hi. I'm Theresa. I came to the US to replace robots. That sure was a long walk.
conservation of mass (Score:2)