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.
Cues is software on a floor-cleaning robot that is already for sale, not a new machine to order. The company presents it as an opt-in control layer. Microphones stay off until an owner turns the feature on, according to a company blog post the same day as the announcement.
What Cues does
Matic describes Cues as voice and gesture control on robots it has already shipped. Its innovation page says Cues enabled those capabilities on all 10,000+ Matic robots ever shipped, in August 2026. That page lists Cues as the Summer 2026 current milestone. The company has not published a firmware version number or a share of owners who have installed or opted into the feature.
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," "Come here," "Clean everything," "Go to the kitchen," "Run the evening schedule" 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. The announcement materials do not cite independent tests of range, language coverage or gesture accuracy.
The Cues page also describes a lock-screen "live activity" view for checking progress or pausing a clean, and a follow-me mode. Those are company product claims on the feature page.
How the company says data is handled
A company blog post dated August 13, 2026, by Amy Mathews, 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 company has not published a ship date for that parser.
Company pages do not all use the same cloud language. The shop FAQ on the product page 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. Those are observable differences among pages open as of September 4, 2026. The company has not published a single document that reconciles the shop FAQ wording with the Cues Gemini send.
Price, shipping and status
Matic the floor robot is available now from the company shop. As of September 4, 2026, the product page says the robot ships only within the United States, in 5–7 days. A one-robot, one-dock package is listed at $1,245, marked down from $1,495 until 9/9. A one-robot, two-dock package is listed at $1,343 (was $1,593) with the same date. Two robots and two docks are listed at $2,490 (was $2,990). The shop states a six-month return window, a one-year warranty for direct purchases and free returns in the lower 48 states. International shipping is not offered. The FAQ says the company does not have a confirmed timeline for other regions.
Cues is presented as already enabled on shipped robots and remains opt-in. It is not listed as a separate SKU with its own price. The on-device-only command parser is in development.
What this means for a household
A US household can buy a Matic vacuum and mop from the company today, according to the shop. As of September 4, 2026, the listed one-robot, one-dock price is $1,245 until 9/9. The company says units ship in 5–7 days inside the United States only. Cues is not an extra robot to purchase. It is an optional software feature the company says it turned on for all 10,000+ robots it has shipped.
Cues does not run until someone in the home opts in. Until that tap, the company says the microphones stay off. After opt-in, the wake phrase is processed on the robot. The spoken command after the chime is sent to Gemini, according to the Cues blog. Gesture video stays on the robot, that post says. A household that never opts in is not using Cues, per the company.
What we don't know without running a product evaluation is whether Cues works as advertised in a given floor plan. Range, language coverage and gesture accuracy are company claims without independent tests in the announcement set. The shop FAQ's "never leaves your home" audio-and-video line sits next to the Cues blog's Gemini send. The company has not published a ship date for an on-device-only command parser. International buyers have no company ship path yet.
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 shop / product page — US shipping, listed prices as of September 4, 2026, and FAQ privacy wording
