Amazon today unveiled Astro, a cute household robot designed for home monitoring. Reminiscent of something out of a Pixar film and described by some as “Alexa on wheels,” Astro leverages Amazon’s latest advances in AI to autonomously guard a user’s home, showing live views of rooms, detecting unrecognized people, and more.
Astro’s standard cost is $1,449.99, but the robot will be available for an introductory price of $999.99 as part of a Day 1 Editions program. The first units will begin shipping to customers in the U.S. later this year.
From the Amazon Blog:
Astro is a new and different kind of robot, one that’s designed to help customers with a range of tasks like home monitoring and keeping in touch with family. It brings together new advancements in artificial intelligence, computer vision, sensor technology, and voice and edge computing in a package that’s designed to be helpful and convenient. Here are just a few of the ways Astro can be used around the house:
- Check in on your home: When you’re away, Astro helps provide the peace of mind that comes with knowing your home is safe. Astro can move autonomously around your home, navigate to check in on specific areas, show you a live view of rooms through the Astro app, or even send alerts if it detects an unrecognized person. If you want to see if you left the stove on, or to confirm you have all the ingredients you need for dinner in the pantry while you’re still at the store, you can send Astro to check or use its built-in periscope camera to take a better look. With Alexa Guard, Astro can also detect the sound of a smoke alarm, carbon monoxide alarm, or glass breaking, and send an alert to your phone—helping you keep your home safe, even when you’re somewhere else.
- Helps you look out for loved ones: Astro will be able to help customers who are remotely caring for elderly relatives and loved ones. Your loved one can ask Astro to set and deliver reminders, or you can use Drop In to stay connected. When used with Alexa Together, a new service designed to help family members feel more comfortable and confident living independently, family members can set up Routines and receive alerts to give caregivers the reassurance that their loved ones are active and going about their day. Alexa Together also gives loved ones 24/7 hands-free access to Urgent Response, a professional emergency helpline.
- Provides peace of mind with Ring: Astro also works with Ring, adding to the peace of mind in keeping your home safe. With Ring Protect Pro, a new subscription service from Ring, you can set Astro to autonomously patrol your home when you’re out, proactively investigate when an event is detected, and automatically save video clips to your Ring cloud storage, which you can review from anywhere in the Ring or Astro apps.
- Brings Alexa to you around the home: When you’re home, Astro brings the benefits of Alexa to you, including information, entertainment, smart home control, and more. Astro can follow you from room to room while playing your favorite shows, podcasts, or music. 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
Amazon has also shared a video highlighting the science behind its Astro robot. Astro offers numerous safety features and strong privacy controls that include an advanced array of safety sensors, on-device processing for quicker response, settings for out-of-bounds zones, and an off button for its microphones and cameras.
Source: Amazon