On August 13, 2026, Matic Robots announced Cues for the Matic robot vacuum and mop it sells in the United States. The optional feature lets an owner speak to the robot or point at a mess, according to company pages. After Cues is turned on, the owner says "Hey Matic," then gives a command or points.
What Cues does
The company describes Cues as software on robots it has already shipped. Its innovation page says Cues enabled voice and gesture control on all 10,000+ Matic robots ever shipped as of August 2026.
Cues uses a wake word, the phrase that starts listening. The company says Matic then finds the direction of the voice and turns toward the speaker. The Cues page lists commands such as "Vacuum the kitchen," "Follow me" and "Clean this" with a pointing gesture. The company says the robot hears the wake phrase from up to 10 meters away. Command parsing covers 70+ languages using Gemini, Google's cloud model for turning speech into a structured request, according to the company. Those are manufacturer claims.
How the company says data is handled
A company blog post dated August 13, 2026 says microphones are off by default. Cues does not run until an owner taps "I want to try," which the post says turns the microphones on. Owners can turn Cues off in settings, and the post says the microphones then turn off.
Once Cues is on, the post says Matic listens only for "Hey Matic." Wake-word audio is analyzed on the robot and discarded. Ambient sound is not recorded, stored or sent anywhere, according to the company.
After the wake word, the robot plays a chime. The spoken command after that chime is sent to the Gemini API over an encrypted connection, the post says. Matic says the send is anonymous and that no user information is sent to the API. It names four models: wake word, direction of arrival and gesture on the robot, plus Gemini for command parsing.
For gestures, the post says onboard cameras detect the person, hand and fingers. That camera data is processed on the robot, discarded and not saved, it says. No camera data leaves the robot, according to the same post.
Matic says it is working on an on-device command parser. Before that model ships, the post says the company wants to know the top 20 or 30 commands. The on-device model will likely be limited to those commands and possibly to English only, it says.
The shop FAQ still says audio and video data never leave the home and that Matic does not send data to the cloud for processing. The innovation page says camera feeds, audio, maps and cleaning history stay on Matic by default and uses the phrase "No cloud." The Cues blog states that post-chime command audio goes to Gemini.
Availability
Matic is available now from the company shop. The product page says the robot ships only within the United States, in 3–5 days. As of August 14, 2026, a one-robot, one-dock package is listed at $1,245, marked down from $1,495 until 9/9.
Cues is presented as already enabled on shipped robots and remains opt-in. The on-device-only command parser is in development. The company has not published a ship date for that model.
Go deeper
- Matic Cues page — company feature claims, example commands and language list
- How Matic Cues handles voice and gesture data — August 13, 2026 company post on opt-in, on-device models and Gemini
- Matic innovation / roadmap — August 2026 rollout language and current milestone
