The Federal Communications Commission added the Matic robot vacuum and its charging dock to its list of products granted an exemption from the agency's import ban, according to an update made on October 2nd. The listing covers the original Matic, model 4MA0001, along with dock model 4DK0008, and clears the way for the FCC to approve those radio products for import, marketing and sale in the United States.
The waiver is not strictly necessary for the Matic. The vacuum's radios received FCC approval years ago, and the agency's bans on foreign drones, robots and routers apply only to future products that have not yet won radio approval, not to devices already cleared. Matic's robots also never go through FCC approval as complete products. The company builds them around an off-the-shelf Intel AX210 Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, the same type of wireless card used in desktop and laptop computers, and that chip holds its own FCC approval.
An import ban would not have been a problem for Matic in any case, because the company assembles its robots in Mountain View, California. A waiver could matter in the future if Matic built new products abroad and tried to bring them into the country, but the FCC did not hand Matic blanket approval for a brand of robot the way it did for routers from Asus and Netgear. The relief applies specifically to models 4MA0001 and 4DK0008, which had already cleared the agency.
The exemption may still carry some weight. The FCC is working to close loopholes that have limited its ban, is considering requiring manufacturers to disclose every component inside their gadgets, and is retroactively pursuing companies it views as ignoring the rules. Matic assembles its robots domestically but acknowledges it does not yet source 65 percent of its components from US suppliers, the threshold for a Made in the US label, leaving foreign parts that could create trouble without the waiver.
Matic already buys its core compute platform from Nvidia and obtains other critical components from US companies whenever it can, co-founder and CEO Mehul Nariyawala said. He said that until three months ago the company's research and development offices and production facilities shared one roughly 24,000-square-foot space in Mountain View, and that the entire facility has since been converted to production while the office moved to Menlo Park. Matic went from shipping 1,500 robots a year ago to 17,000 now, and Nariyawala said the company is hunting for more American suppliers so it can reduce its use of foreign parts, adding that the Matic may currently be the only floor cleaning robot built in America and that this is becoming a central selling point.
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