During its fall hardware event on September 28, Amazon announced a home robot called Astro, which is designed to serve as a helpful mobile assistant that can navigate the main floor of your home. Amazon promises that Astro can patrol your home while you’re away, move small objects from room to room (as long as a human puts the object in the storage bin), and follow a person with its periscope camera while it shoots a video. Make calls, play music and games with the kids, as well as perform a host of other small tasks. Essentially, it’s an Echo Show 10 on wheels, complete with Alexa support, mixed with some of the prospects of a robot vacuum sans vacuuming – room assignment, navigation, and self-charging via a dock.
Astro is being produced in small quantities to begin with, because Amazon fully understands what the robot can do in the homes of more and more people, so it’s starting out as an invite-only product. The Alexa-enabled assistant robot will ultimately cost $1,449.99, but is available for $999.99 as part of Amazon’s Day 1 Editions program and comes with a six-month trial of the Ring Protect Pro service. you can send Invitation requests on Amazonand the company said it will begin issuing invitations and shipping Astro devices to US customers “by the end of this year.”
