Imagine waking up on a peaceful Sunday morning. The house is quiet, the kids are still asleep, and you're looking forward to a relaxing day. But the moment your feet hit the floor, reality sets in—the house is a mess. Last night’s dinner party left dirt and stains everywhere, and cleaning just jumped to the top of your to-do list.

Most of us juggle busy lives, and household chores don’t wait. We cook, clean, organize, and maintain our entire households mostly by ourselves. It doesn’t matter if we're feeling lazy, sad or tired. We could be busy taking care of a 3-year-old, getting back into shape, nursing an injury, chasing down a work deadline, or building a dream business – our chores do not magically get done by themselves. The pasta sauce stain from last night is still there on the floor. It’s staring right at you as you walk around, calling on you to grab a paper towel, wet it from the sink, get on your hands and knees, and scrub. So much for living in the future, and the age of AI.

At Matic, we’ve decided to fix this by building delightful and useful home robots that save you time and energy. The first step of course is to fix the most obvious, widespread problem of all, which is floor cleaning.

Through this post, we intend to shed some light on the mopping feature we built into Matic – something that came together after a lot of design and engineering iterations and has been a big technical and product achievement for us. The goal here is to explain why we built the robot the way we did, some exceptional results that we’ve achieved, and some limitations we’ve chosen to live with for now. Hopefully, this helps people make an educated decision about their next robotic cleaner purchase, with or without Matic.

Why build a mopping feature into a cleaning robot?

Let’s start with the problem: dirty floors. From an engineering perspective, it’s helpful to break the problem into smaller, more manageable parts. Here’s one way to do it—characterize each cleaning task by two key factors:

1. What kind of floor is it on?
2. What kind of debris needs to be cleaned?

For floors, we identified the following types:

a. Hardwood floors
b. Ceramic tiled floors
c. Marble flooring
d. Low pile carpet
e. Medium pile carpet
f. High pile carpet

As for debris, we narrowed it down to:

a. Small debris (e.g. dust)
b. Medium debris (e.g. coffee grounds, sunflower seeds)
c. Large debris (e.g. popcorn)
d. String like debris (e.g. pet fur, hair)
e. Sheet like debris (e.g. pieces of paper)
f. Stains (e.g. mud stain, wine stain, ketchup stain etc.)

It’s worth mentioning that we decided early on not to design a machine for extremely challenging messes—like broken wine glasses, spilled plates of food, or pet waste. While technically feasible, we intentionally left these out of scope for now, pinning them for future exploration.

Based on the lists above, any type of debris can theoretically end up on any type of flooring. This gives us at least 36 unique cleaning scenarios to tackle (6 floor types × 6 debris types).

As we started experimenting with cleaning techniques, we realized that certain scenarios require extra care and attention. Consider the three examples below:

In all these scenarios, dry sweeping or vacuuming alone is ineffective. Wet spills can cake the inside of a dry system, clogging it instead of collecting the mess. Dried stains resist even the strongest vacuum or toughest bristle brushes—scrubbing harder risks damaging your floors without removing the stain. As for fine dirt, sweeping and vacuuming leave behind invisible residue that you can feel when walking barefoot. This dirt also clings to toddlers’ hands and feet, or for those with sensitive lungs, stirs up allergens in the air as you move around.

These challenges are exactly why we built mopping into Matic. In this context, “mopping” refers to an advanced cleaning mechanism that uses a solvent—most commonly water—as a medium to collect debris (as opposed to simply wetting it). This solvent dissolves both wet and dried stains, allowing them to be effectively lifted away. For fine dirt, water dissipates static charges that dry cleaning methods struggle to overcome, reaching deeper into floor crevices to dissolve stubborn particles. Combined with cleaning agents, Matic’s mopping system removes tough messes and leaves floors squeaky clean, shiny, and fresh-smelling.

Simply put, mopping delivers a level of clean that vacuuming alone can’t achieve.

What’s already out there?

Before we dive into what Matic’s mopping system is, let’s take a moment to discuss what it isn’t. The clue lies in the definition of mopping we provided earlier—bear with me.

Most robotic cleaners with a mopping function rely on a flat pad attached to the bottom of the robot. This pad is continuously dampened by water from an onboard reservoir. The idea is that as the robot moves around, the wet pad interacts with stains on the floor and cleans them. Simple, right? Great! Except… is it really great?

This system has some significant flaws. The biggest problem, by far, is that no water is actually being picked up. Here’s what happens: the water drips onto the mop, reaches the stain, and dissolves it. Some of the dissolved stain transfers to the mop, but then the mop just keeps going. As the robot encounters more dirt and stains, the already saturated mop pad begins spreading that mess around. At this point, it’s not cleaning your floors anymore—it’s wetting them and redistributing fine dirt, which isn’t helpful at all.

Getting into the details, most of the stain and dirt accumulates at the leading edge of the mop (the frontmost part), while the rest of the pad is underutilized.

Now, the most dedicated users might work around this issue by frequently replacing the mop pad. But doing so involves a tedious process: pausing the robot, removing the water tank, flipping the robot over, detaching the pad, washing and drying it (or replacing it entirely), reinstalling the pad, reattaching the tank, turning the robot back upright, and restarting the process. Sure, you can do all that—but doesn’t that defeat the purpose of buying a robot to automate mopping in the first place?

What’s worse is that most robots don’t even know when the pad needs to be cleaned. Users are expected to monitor this limitation themselves and intervene manually, which feels more like babysitting than automation.

Some companies try to address this by creating bulky docks with overengineered cleaning mechanisms. These docks allow the robot to return periodically for a noisy, mechanical cleaning. However, these docks have their own set of problems: they’re clunky, prone to breaking, take up a lot of space, and, let’s be honest, aren’t the prettiest addition to your home. Even if we set those issues aside, our lab tests show that these dock-based cleaning systems are unreliable at best. For all these reasons, the dock-based approach didn’t strike us as an elegant or effective solution, so we chose not to pursue it.

Another limitation of most robots is their inability to scrub stains effectively. For stains to be scrubbed, the robot needs to move back and forth, which takes excessive time and energy. Some robots attempt to solve this with vibrating pads, and while that can work to an extent, it comes with its own challenges. Beyond a certain point, increasing vibration makes the robot noisier, less stable, or too power-hungry.

What’s different (and great) about Matic’s Mopping?

The concept behind Matic’s mopping system is simple yet remarkably unique for a robotic mop. Instead of relying on gravity to drip water onto a flat pad, we use an electronically controlled peristaltic pump to dispense a precise amount of water onto our mopping roll.

This mopping roll is a powered, rotating cylindrical brush wrapped in microfiber fabric. When in mopping mode, the roll remains in a wet state and continuously scrubs your floors as Matic moves.

The effectiveness of Matic’s mopping system lies in the combined action of the rotating mopping roll, the weight of Matic’s cleaning head, and its backward motion. Together, these elements deliver exceptional cleaning efficacy that is simply unmatched by other robotic cleaners.

Here are some results from our cleaning tests:

What makes Matic truly special is that, unlike other robots, its cleaning efficacy doesn’t drastically drop after mopping the first room. Why? Because the mopping roll is continuously self-cleaned as it scrubs your floors. Enter: the wringer.

On the rear-facing wall of the mopping head is a specially designed component we call the wringer. Its crucial function is to dig into the fibers of the rotating mopping roll and mechanically squeeze out a bead of dirty water—much like wringing out a towel, hence the name. This bead of dirty water is then immediately sucked up by Matic’s vacuum motor, which continuously acts on the mop. The dirty water is transported through two internal tubes directly into Matic’s HEPA bag, where it’s securely stored alongside the debris collected by the sweeping system.

We like to think of this system as a conveyor belt of sorts that carries the dirt from your floor all the way to the HEPA bag*, where it is held until the user disposes of the bag.

*Matic’s bag alone has half a dozen interesting engineering ideas worth talking about, but we’ll leave that for another blog.

There are a few special consequences to this design:

• The mop is always clean, and so it cleans better
• The robot is truly picking up stains, not just rubbing them around
• You as the user, don’t have to worry about cleaning the mop all the time

Of course, all of this was easier said than done. We ran into a LOT of interesting challenges and surprises while developing this system. I’ll list a few of them here:

1. Ensuring that water gets effectively sucked up without spilling back onto the floor.
2. Keeping the mop quiet during operation.
3. Allowing the mop to be lifted off the ground when not in use.
4. Preventing the mop motors from overheating.
5. Maintaining the overall reliability of the mopping system.
6. Ensuring the mop isn’t running too dry or too wet.
7. Keeping the mop clean and fluffy throughout.
8. Preventing the mop from jamming on cords.
9. Detecting when the mop is too worn out.
10. Identifying when the mopping suction tubes are clogged with debris.

Many of these challenges were addressed through the specific mechanical design of the parts and assemblies surrounding the mop. Others led to the development of innovative sensing systems and control logic. Each of these areas is a topic worth exploring in detail, so we’ll leave that for future discussions.

In summary, here are the main benefits of Matic’s mopping system for you as a consumer:

1. Drastically better cleaning performance you can rely on.
2. Instead of replacing mopping pads multiple times a day, you only need to change the mop roll once every 3 to 6 months.
3. Minimal noise during mopping.
4. The ability to clean in various ways and at different intensity levels.

What’s not so great about Matic’s Mopping?

(But will be better soon)

Despite all this work, we still have a long way to go to build the perfect mopping system. This is above and beyond anything out there, but our bar is not the market, it is what’s best for the consumers.

In the spirit of continuous improvement, here are some limitations to the Matic Mopping system specifically we hope to improve the coming version of the product, hopefully sometime in the next two to three years.

1. We still ask you to fill up the robot’s water tank

This one shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but a mopping system uses clean water. Since we decided not to build a huge dock, we also decided to keep the entire water supply onboard the Matic robot. The current water tank on the robot holds around 600 mL of water, which in the normal mode is enough to clean around 1500 sq.ft. of area. If you’re running in mopping in the deep clean mode, this amount of cleaning area will drop down to around half because of two passes i.e. around 750 sq.ft. of cleaning area.

Matic already has a dedicated water-sensing system built into it. This means that Matic knows when its water tank has been depleted and will send you a notification on your cell phone that it needs more water. However, one feature that we intend to roll out soon is that beyond just sending a notification, Matic will go sit by a designated water supply point so you don’t have to walk to it in order to fill the tank. Perks of having a reliable SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) and path planning software stack! Note that this is a software feature and will be rolled out as an “Over the Air” update to all Matic robots soon.

2. We still ask you to remove the bag once it’s full and this can be somewhat frequent, depending on the usage

An obvious consequence of the fact that we pick up water, is the fact that the dirty water does need to be discarded eventually. There’s a lot of thinking that has gone into why and how bags make the most sense, but for now, suffice it to say that bags will need to be replaced once they are full. There is also a mechanism at play where if you mop somewhat infrequently, then the water collected in Matic’s bag evaporates before the bag is full and this can extend the life of the bag. Each bag is good for around 4000 - 4500 sq. ft. of mopping in one go, so you'd have to be doing a lot of mopping everyday for this to be a real issue.

3. The way the robot deals with excess humidity leads to a small humming noise

One of the interesting problems we ran into while developing the system was that the water from the bag would evaporate and corrode the bearings in the vacuum motor. To solve this problem, while sitting on the dock, Matic will periodically run the vacuum motor to ensure that the humidity level never goes into a zone where proper condensation would happen. The side-effect is that there is a small amount of noise from the vacuum motor if the robot is idle on the dock after mopping. We have many ideas on how to solve this problem a lot more elegantly for future iterations, but this is definitely a limitation of the current system.

4. The wringer needs to be cleaned every month or so

Since we can’t control what’s on the dirty floors, soluble stains are not the only thing Matic’s mop will encounter. It also encounters pet fur, hair, fuzz from carpets, and other non-water-soluble debris. This problem is further exacerbated if the user chooses to mop without vacuuming the floor first. We considered removing this option from the app, but then relented and chose to provide more control to the user rather than less. The consequence of this is that the wringer may get clogged and will eventually require manual cleaning. We’ve designed the system so that the wringer can be removed without flipping the robot over, so hopefully this is as painless as possible. Additionally, the robot also detects when this needs to be done and will send a notification to the user on their phone when this service is needed.

5. The mop roll will accumulate hair that will need to be removed every two to three months

A consequence of a rotating mop roll is that stringy objects such as long hair will wrap around the rotating components and not come off easily. This again is something we require the user to be somewhat mindful of and clean every two to three months. The mop can be removed without flipping the robot over as is illustrated in the video tutorials shown below.

In conclusion, while Matic’s mopping system isn’t perfect quite yet, it represents a significant leap forward in automated cleaning technology. By addressing the core inefficiencies of traditional robotic mops and introducing innovative features like the self-cleaning mop roll and wringer, we’ve created a solution that works much better for modern homes.

At Matic, we’re not just building robots; we’re building better lives by freeing you from tedious chores. And while we’re proud of what we’ve achieved, we’re even more excited about what’s to come.

If you’ve read this far, we’d love to hear your thoughts and comments. Please do share!

Here’s to cleaner floors and brighter days, with a little help from Matic!