Amazon unveils Astro, an Alexa robot that roams your home
Robots are hard, and home robots are hard in many ways. Apart from the tremendous success of robot vacuums like Roomba, no one has managed to build anything truly perfect, although many have tried. Today this work is mostly the domain of startups like Anki and Jibo. However, there is another company pouring huge resources into solving this problem.
All the recent rumors turned out to be true. Amazon is working on a wheeled robot based on its Alexa voice assistant. At its fall event, Amazon introduced Astro. It will initially cost $1,000 and become available later in 2021. In essence, it is an Alexa display that can move around your home.
"Stay close to home with Astro, a home robot for keeping an eye on your house with Alexa. When you're away, use the Astro app to see your home in real time, check specific rooms and viewpoints, and get activity alerts. When you're home, Astro can follow you from room to room, playing your favorite music, podcasts or shows, find you to deliver calls, reminders, alarms and timers set with Alexa," Amazon said.
The robot takes its first steps on the market as part of the Amazon Day One Edition program and includes a free six-month trial of Ring Protect Pro. It will be available in limited quantities and is certainly the most ambitious device in this program. The initial price will rise over time and reach $1,500.
The company began work on the device about four years ago, using various Amazon departments to create a fully realized home robot. Astro performs three main functions:
- watching over loved ones
- home security
- a mobile version of the Alexa home experience
“We talked about artificial intelligence, computer vision and computing power, and one of the topics was robotics. How to change robotics to make it accessible to consumers. Of course, we have a lot of experience using robotics in our fulfillment centers, but we thought about what we could come up with for the home consumer to make things more convenient or provide more peace of mind. This made us think, and in the end we said: 'Good heavens, does anyone think we won't have robotics in the home in 5-10 years?”
The editor of TechCrunch saw the Astro robot in person and got to know it up close. The robot is best described as something similar to R2-D2, BB-8 or WALL-E. Its face, which is effectively a tablet or screen, has a pair of minimalist eyes. From time to time they blink and move.
All of this is complemented by random sounds and something reminiscent of the same droids from Star Wars. The bot can be called by name, but some functions require calling Alexa. Astro's 10-inch touchscreen is the standard Echo Show display, so you can watch movies, hold video calls and control your smart home with it. The screen moves on its own, but it can be tilted manually by 60 degrees for a better view. It also supports Amazon's new Visual ID face recognition to personalize interactions with Astro.
The device has a pair of speakers, although the robot is surprisingly quiet. On the back is a cargo compartment with an additional cup holder that can hold up to 2 kg. Inside is a USB-C port for charging a phone. Astro has its own dock, which it returns to on its own, and a full charge takes less than an hour.
The robot has built-in proximity sensors and several cameras, including a 5-megapixel RGB camera built into the front panel of its screen and a 12-megapixel camera with IR illumination, which is great for live streaming. Astro's extendable base can reach 1.2 m and serve as a kind of periscope for a better view.
Amazon said it tested the robot in "thousands" of homes to solve some problems, such as getting stuck in a random corner. However, no one knows exactly how many people will want to buy Astro.
“This is the first series of robots we are making. It is an invitation-only program. We want people who receive Astro to get a great experience from it, given the complexity of the home and its various spaces. When we think about the long term and consumer robotics, we of course want to offer all kinds of price ranges and capabilities, and to have a more focused core product as part of that. But we think Astro is a good place to start validating the work we have done to create value from day one, and to make sure that what we built truly makes sense for consumers. We will be interested to get that feedback when we start shipping the product later this year”
With the Ring Protect Pro subscription service, you can program Astro to patrol your home while you're away. It can detect the sound of a smoke alarm, carbon monoxide detector or broken glass. The robot will send you a notification when it detects something unusual. During video calls, Astro will follow you around the house for as long as the conversation continues.
Astro can be switched to a "do not disturb" mode that restricts its movement during the day or at night. In addition, the company says you can set no-go zones so the bot cannot enter certain rooms or areas.
