8 ms·

Hey All, we (maticrobots.com) have built a local-only fully autonomous robot mop and vacuum. We just use 5 RGB cameras with all on the edge device processings.

by mehuln 3y ago

Hey All, we (maticrobots.com) have built a local-only fully autonomous robot mop and vacuum. We just use 5 RGB cameras with all on the edge device processings. We send even the map data to app using local WiFi. No cloud at all. Matic builds full matterport like 3D map just using CV. This enables Matic to Precisely navigate without bumping at all. We have built 10x better vSLAM than the best open source lib like Orb SLAM. AMA.

manmal 3y ago
How do you handle changes during a session? Eg legs/cats, chairs being moved etc - are those constantly re-integrated in the map?
- mehuln 3y ago
  Matic keeps both static (historical map) and dynamic constant live mapping. So it constantly observes changes live all the time — just the way we do. And it keeps merging these changes in the slam graph/maps.
rmeno12 3y ago
Would you please expand on your VSLAM improvements? What other implementations are you comparing against and on what metrics/settings?
- mehuln 3y ago
  The latest NN based approaches still fall short of ORB-SLAM - which is considered the state of the art (in terms implementations). However, it still has only 70% success rate in loop closures. We tend to measure our accuracy with loop closures and slam graph consistency over time. Here’s the link of Matic self and exploring and building map on the fly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul_Home.mp4?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul...
  - ranguna 3y ago
    Is that sped up ?
    - mehuln 3y ago
      Yes. Its at 4x the speed.
ihattendorf 3y ago
Any specific reason to avoid Lidar? Cost?
- Rebelgecko 3y ago
  Probably not, it looks like it costs about 4x what my lidar vacuum did
  - krasin 3y ago
    And there's an annual subscription on top. I really don't understand the value proposition here.
    - yoavm 3y ago
      I don't see an annual subscription. I see one year of "unlimited replacement of HEPA Bags, Mop Rolls, and Brush Rolls". That sounds great actually.
      - mehuln 3y ago
        Thank you. Thats correct. Membership is OPTIONAL. Users are welcome to buy bags and rolls a la carte. And Membership is more peace of mind with all-you-can-clean like unlimited bags and rolls, extended warranty, and accidental damage coverage.
  - mehuln 3y ago
    Cost is in computes and lack of economies of scale. Have to take Tesla like high-end to more affordable overtime approach. Disc robots have been around for 20 years. Most are exactly the same from inside.
- mehuln 3y ago
  Single pixel lidars are not enough. Anything higher is way too expensive. Also, Indoor world is designed with our vision first perception. We think robots need to be imbued with similar system. And we believe vision is enough (there’s a reason why nature chose vision based systems for us?) Three bottlenecks in on fully autonomous indoor robots are: 1. Perception and Precise SLAM 2. Affordability 3. Privacy. All three are feasible with Tesla like cameras only approach. Problem with indoor robots isn’t sensors — it’s lack of brains/algorithms.
hedgehog 3y ago
Looks pretty nice. How does it handle cleaning under furniture?
- mehuln 3y ago
  Thank you. Cleaning head is 2 inches tall and extends up to 3 inches below furniture. It cleans all the visible dirt and goes underneath anything that’s taller than ~14”. It’s designed to clean visible dirt thoroughly. Frankly, if primary use case is cleaning underneath furniture than disc robots are great already.
  - hedgehog 3y ago
    Thanks, that makes sense. For context: having little kids we also keep all the crawl-accessible spaces pretty clean which includes under couches etc. Manual vacuum immediately for any obvious mess to keep it from spreading, robot to handle tediously complete levels of coverage.
    - mehuln 3y ago
      Totally understand and the use case and really appreciate your feedback. We hope to resolve that in diff way. Just things kind of like truck vs suv vs sedan — we will just need diff form factor. With this one, we really want to eliminate day to day use.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
oynqr 3y ago
All of the devices that Valetudo supports also only run the actual cleaning logic local-only. That's why Valetudo works in the first place.
- mehuln 3y ago
  Yep. The diff is dynamic and continuous mapping.
  - flemhans 3y ago
    Does Valetudo remove that? The stock Dreame firmware does that, and I got the impression the core navigation and cleaning routes would stay intact.
matthew-wegner 3y ago
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/ 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!

by mehuln 3y ago

manmal 3y ago

How do you handle changes during a session? Eg legs/cats, chairs being moved etc - are those constantly re-integrated in the map?

mehuln 3y ago
Matic keeps both static (historical map) and dynamic constant live mapping. So it constantly observes changes live all the time — just the way we do. And it keeps merging these changes in the slam graph/maps.

rmeno12 3y ago

Would you please expand on your VSLAM improvements? What other implementations are you comparing against and on what metrics/settings?

mehuln 3y ago
The latest NN based approaches still fall short of ORB-SLAM - which is considered the state of the art (in terms implementations). However, it still has only 70% success rate in loop closures. We tend to measure our accuracy with loop closures and slam graph consistency over time. Here’s the link of Matic self and exploring and building map on the fly: https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul_Home.mp4?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/e051nmb1ci0o8nu/Auto_Explore_Mehul...
- ranguna 3y ago
  Is that sped up ?
  - mehuln 3y ago
    Yes. Its at 4x the speed.

ihattendorf 3y ago

Any specific reason to avoid Lidar? Cost?

Rebelgecko 3y ago
Probably not, it looks like it costs about 4x what my lidar vacuum did
- krasin 3y ago
  And there's an annual subscription on top. I really don't understand the value proposition here.
  - yoavm 3y ago
    I don't see an annual subscription. I see one year of "unlimited replacement of HEPA Bags, Mop Rolls, and Brush Rolls". That sounds great actually.
    - mehuln 3y ago
      Thank you. Thats correct. Membership is OPTIONAL. Users are welcome to buy bags and rolls a la carte. And Membership is more peace of mind with all-you-can-clean like unlimited bags and rolls, extended warranty, and accidental damage coverage.
- mehuln 3y ago
  Cost is in computes and lack of economies of scale. Have to take Tesla like high-end to more affordable overtime approach. Disc robots have been around for 20 years. Most are exactly the same from inside.
mehuln 3y ago
Single pixel lidars are not enough. Anything higher is way too expensive. Also, Indoor world is designed with our vision first perception. We think robots need to be imbued with similar system. And we believe vision is enough (there’s a reason why nature chose vision based systems for us?) Three bottlenecks in on fully autonomous indoor robots are: 1. Perception and Precise SLAM 2. Affordability 3. Privacy. All three are feasible with Tesla like cameras only approach. Problem with indoor robots isn’t sensors — it’s lack of brains/algorithms.

hedgehog 3y ago

Looks pretty nice. How does it handle cleaning under furniture?

mehuln 3y ago
Thank you. Cleaning head is 2 inches tall and extends up to 3 inches below furniture. It cleans all the visible dirt and goes underneath anything that’s taller than ~14”. It’s designed to clean visible dirt thoroughly. Frankly, if primary use case is cleaning underneath furniture than disc robots are great already.
- hedgehog 3y ago
  Thanks, that makes sense. For context: having little kids we also keep all the crawl-accessible spaces pretty clean which includes under couches etc. Manual vacuum immediately for any obvious mess to keep it from spreading, robot to handle tediously complete levels of coverage.
  - mehuln 3y ago
    Totally understand and the use case and really appreciate your feedback. We hope to resolve that in diff way. Just things kind of like truck vs suv vs sedan — we will just need diff form factor. With this one, we really want to eliminate day to day use.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

oynqr 3y ago

All of the devices that Valetudo supports also only run the actual cleaning logic local-only. That's why Valetudo works in the first place.

mehuln 3y ago
Yep. The diff is dynamic and continuous mapping.
- flemhans 3y ago
  Does Valetudo remove that? The stock Dreame firmware does that, and I got the impression the core navigation and cleaning routes would stay intact.

matthew-wegner 3y ago

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/ 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!