Amazon announced a home robot called Astro at its fall hardware event today, September 28, which is designed to serve as a helpful mobile assistant that can navigate the ground floor. floor of your house. Amazon promises Astro will be able to patrol your home while you're away, carry small items from room to room (as long as a human places the item in their storage compartment), track a person with their periscope camera while a video call, play music and play games with the children, as well as perform a host of other small tasks. It's basically an Echo Show 10 on wheels, complete with Alexa support, mixed in with some of the expectations of a non-vacuum robot vacuum cleaner – room assignment, navigation and self-charging via a dock. Home.
The Astro is being made in small batches to begin with, as Amazon figures out exactly what the robot will be able to do in more homes, so it's starting as an invite-only product. The Alexa-enabled robot assistant will eventually cost $1,449.99, but it's available through the Amazon Day 1 Editions program for $999.99 and comes with a six-month trial of the Ring Protect Pro service. You can submit invite requests on Amazon, and the company said it will begin granting invites and shipping Astro devices to US customers "later this year".
