Tag Archive for: Astro

Amazon plans more home robots despite early skepticism about Astro – GeekWire

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Ken Washington, Amazon’s VP of consumer robotics, with the Amazon Astro home robot. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)

Amazon unveiled Astro, its first home robot, in September, after developing the rolling Alexa device in secret for several years. In an introductory video, the company anticipated the skepticism Astro would face.

“A robot?” a mom in the video asks. “What are we going to do with a robot?”

In this fictional world, of course, Astro wins people over with its ability to navigate autonomously through a house, serve as a mobile security and video conferencing hub, check the stove with its periscoping camera, help family members check in on older relatives, start a dance party, and deliver a drink to someone on the couch.

In the real world, however, Astro still has some convincing to do.

Astro “is a solution in search of a problem,” concluded CNET’s David Priest in his review. “It’s cool, undeniably, and I’m excited to see what home robots look like in the near future … But for now, Astro remains an interesting device with a lot of potential, but too little utility to really be worth that price tag.”

That price tag, for now, is $1,000, if you’re one of the limited number of customers whose request to purchase Astro is approved through Amazon’s Day One Editions preview program. Eventually, when Astro is more widely released to the general public, the price is expected to go up to $1,500.

Astro is 17-inches tall with a 10-inch display, a rear cargo hold and a periscoping camera.

It rolls around autonomously on two wheels. In essence, it’s a mobile Echo device, responding to questions in the voice of Alexa. Astro otherwise communicates through beeps and blips and a pair of expressive digital “eyes” in the form of simple animated emoticons on its screen.

Amazon acknowledges the skepticism about Astro but makes it clear that it’s not giving up so easily. The company is working on improvements based on initial feedback, and it describes Astro as the first in a line of home robots.

“This is the beginning of the journey for us,” said Ken Washington, Amazon’s vice president of consumer…

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Amazon’s Astro may be cute, but security experts warn of privacy concerns

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Astro may be cute, but he’ll always be watching.


Amazon

Amazon’s new robot is designed to zip around your house and serve as a faithful watchdroid. Named Astro, the bot will keep an eye on an aging family member and warn you if the stove is inadvertently left on. You’ll never have to worry about the bot’s focus; Astro can’t be distracted by a big steak. 

With big round blinking eyes, Astro is reminiscent of Pixar’s Wall-E and just as cute. But privacy experts say consumers need to be aware that those eyes might not be real but they’ll always be watching.

“One of my big fears about this new wave of technology that [Amazon has] unleashed this week is that it will introduce more full-scale data harvesting,” says Matthew Guariglia, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Who knows what data they could harvest from a robot that travels around your home?”

Saving the showstopper until the end of its hour-long fall product event, Amazon took the wraps off Astro on Tuesday. The robot, available by invite only for the moment, costs $1,000. The price will jump to $1,450 when it’s released more broadly.

Amazon says the smart home robot, a sort of Alexa on wheels, can monitor security, keep tabs on young family members and be there for whatever you might need Alexa for, like voice control of your lights. The bot is operated via an app that also receives Astro’s alerts. The app is used as well to drive the robot around and see what it sees.

While Astro serves as a test of whether we want robots wheeling around our homes, it’s also another example of a product from Amazon that stretches the bounds of…

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Amazon announces Astro, its first home robot

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“Alexa, ask Astro to come in here.”

I’m sitting on a couch in a simulated living room at Amazon’s Lab126 product R&D lab in Sunnyvale, California. Amazon VP of products Charlie Tritschler, who has been describing the company’s new home robot to me, is summoning the bot from another room, where it’s been biding its time before making an appearance.

The squat, gleaming white bot rolls through the door and into the area where Tritschler, principal product manager Anthony Robson, and I have been discussing it. After negotiating a carpet, it whirs in my direction. But it eventually uses facial recognition to spot Tritschler, who’s in a nearby armchair, and wheels up to him.

Code-named “Vesta,” Astro has been in the works for four years—and has been the subject of rumor and speculation for almost as long. The robot has been described as “Alexa on wheels,” which is accurate as far as it goes: It uses Amazon’s voice assistant for control and packs features—from video calls to music playback—available on other Alexa-powered devices. With its ability to monitor homes for intruders and other risks to safety, Astro is also an extension of Amazon’s security ecosystem, most of which otherwise involves products sold under its Ring brand.

But this product’s implications go far beyond those of a new Echo Show smart screen or Ring video doorbell. Rosie, the Jetsons’s robotic maid, has been a symbol of life in the future for almost 60 years; attempts to market household robots go back at least to the 1980s. Yet aside from iRobot’s Roomba and other floor-cleaning bots, useful home robots feel no closer to reality than flying cars and personal jetpacks. With Astro, Amazon aims to change that.

However, the company isn’t claiming that its robot is ready for the masses just yet. Astro will debut as a Day 1 Edition, part of an invitation-only program that will allow a select group of people to buy it for $1,000, marked down from the official price of $1,500. You can request an invite starting today, and Amazon plans to begin accepting participants and shipping Astros later this year. Early adopters will help shape the product’s future: “Our goal is to get feedback…

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