Amazon has created a personal robot called Astro that can roll around your home.
The upcoming $1,499 product is essentially an Amazon Echo, Ring security device, and video screen all packed into a robot on wheels that can respond to your voice commands.
Amazon demoed the 17-inch tall robot during a Tuesday event. Dave Limp, the company’s senior vice president of devices, summoned Astro with the words “Astro, join me on stage.” The bot then drove itself forward while making cute robot sounds.
The company developed Astro for people looking to take their smart home tech to the next level. “Even in a home as Alexa-fied as mine, there are still lots of things my home can’t do because my devices are stationary,” Limp said. “This robot changes all of that.”
For example, owners can send the robot to act as a wheel-driven web camera to check on their home while they’re away. Astro can also send out alerts if it detects a stranger in your home or work in tandem with Amazon’s Ring home security product line to patrol your house.
In addition, Astro can act as a mobile entertainment center and virtual assistant on wheels. The robot’s digital face appears on a 10.1-inch touch-screen display that can also beam video calls.
“Astro can follow you from room to room while playing your favorite shows, podcasts, or music,” Amazon said. “It can also find you to deliver reminders, let you know that a timer went off, snap a family photo, and notify you of incoming Alexa calls—with the ability to follow you around your home while you are on the call.”
Astro has already undergone “hundreds of thousands of hours of internal testing with Amazon employees.” And according to the company, the robot is smart enough to avoid crashing into walls, rolling over objects laying on the ground, or falling down a flight of stairs.
On the privacy front, Amazon said: “We’ve designed Astro to handle a lot of the data processing on the device, including the images and raw sensor data it processes as it moves around your home.” The product also comes with dedicated buttons that can shut off the camera and microphones on the machine.
Although Astro will retail for $1,499, the company plans on selling the first units for $999 to early adopters. The company is making it available to initial buyers through an invite system via Amazon’s Day 1 Edition program.
“Astro will be available in limited quantities, and we plan to start granting invitations and shipping devices to customers in the US later this year,” the company added.
