New Robot Vacuum Lets You Simply Point to Clean Up Messes

Matic, my go-to robot vacuum, just received a significant upgrade. The new Matic Cues feature introduces voice and gesture control, allowing you to communicate directly with your vacuum. You can now instruct it verbally or simply point at a mess for it to spot-clean.

This feature is rolling out today, August 13, at 2 PM ET, and can be found in the Matic app under Settings > Matic Cues. This update comes just before a price increase on September 9, which will raise the cost of this WALL-E-style robot from $1,245 to $1,495.

I’ve been testing Matic Cues for a day, and it’s performing impressively. The gesture control is the highlight, as it’s a unique offering among robot vacuums. The founders, both computer vision engineers with experience at Google Nest, have been developing this feature since 2017.

To activate the robot, you simply say “Hey, Matic,” and it will turn toward your voice. You can then point to the mess and say “clean here,” and it gets to work. I found that for smaller areas, I needed to crouch to point accurately; standing up resulted in a wider cleaning path, which took longer. It can also follow you, so saying “Hey Matic, follow me,” while walking to the mess initiates a clean-up.

Thanks to its existing vision hardware, which includes five cameras, gesture control operates entirely on the device and will be available for all current Matic models. While many robot vacuums allow spot-cleaning through app-drawn zones, I’ve found that method to be imprecise for quick clean-ups. Some respond to a “clean here” voice command, but that’s based on your general location; Matic’s gesture-based approach feels much more targeted.

The new built-in voice assistant also performed well during my initial tests. While voice control isn’t new to robot vacuums—most are compatible with Alexa and Google, and some even with Siri—many require you to remember specific commands. Matic, however, uses the Gemini API to understand natural language, allowing for commands like “vacuum the inside of the carpet” (avoiding tassels), “clean just the hard floors,” and “clean the toekicks in the kitchen,” which is something I always want done after cooking.

The robot could hear me from another room and responded quickly, though it took a moment to execute the command. It doesn’t talk back; instead, a small display shows that it heard you and indicates what it’s doing.

I was impressed by its ability to understand multiple commands in a row, such as “clean the kitchen, vacuum the living room, and then mop the bathroom.” It even returned to its dock when I said, “Hey Matic, go away,” which is convenient when it’s in the way while I’m cooking.

One of Matic’s key advantages is that it doesn’t rely on the cloud and can function without an internet connection. However, voice control does require internet access. While the wake word “Hey Matic” is processed on-device, subsequent commands are sent to the Gemini API, with a chime indicating when data is transmitted.

Mehul Nariyawala, co-founder and president of Matic, mentioned that the commands sent are anonymized. The decision to use cloud processing allows support for over 75 languages and a broader range of commands. The company plans to localize the top 20 or 30 most-used commands in the future. Matic Cues is optional, and you can disable it and the microphones in the settings.

The balance between convenience and privacy is a common issue in smart home tech. While Roborock’s “Hey Rocky” voice assistant operates entirely on-device, I rarely use it due to its lack of intuitiveness. In contrast, I find myself using “Hey Matic” much more often because it’s simply easier to communicate with. The gesture control also addresses a long-standing challenge of getting a robot to clean exactly where I want. For current Matic users, this update is a valuable enhancement, and for those considering a purchase, it adds a new level of convenience to an already excellent robot vacuum.