Amazon Launches Home Assistant Robot ‘Astro’: It Can Detect Smoke Alarm, Manage Video Calls

Astro can move autonomously around the home, navigate to check in on specific areas, show a live view of rooms through the Astro app, or even send alerts if it detects an unrecognised person.

San Francisco: Amazon has finally announced its long-rumoured “Astro”, a home assistant robot that can manage video calls, recognises users, and come to find them when someone calls. Astro will provide all the features of Alexa on wheels.

The new home assistance will cost $1,449.99, but as part of the Day 1 Edition program, it will be available for an introductory price of $999.99 with a six-month trial of the Ring Protect Pro subscription included. It will be available in limited quantities, and Amazon plans to start granting invitations and shipping devices to customers in the US later this year.

“We have 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. This helps Astro respond quickly to its environment. In addition, your visual ID is stored on the device, and Astro uses on-device processing to recognise you,” the company said in a statement.

Astro can move autonomously around the home, navigate to check in on specific areas, show a live view of rooms through the Astro app, or even send alerts if it detects an unrecognised person.

With Alexa Guard, Astro can even detect the sound of a smoke alarm, carbon monoxide alarm, or glass breaking, and send an alert to your phone-helping users to keep home safe.

Like Echo devices, the new home assistance robot Astro has a microphones/cameras-off button customers can press whenever they want to turn off cameras, mics, and motion. When this button is pressed, Astro cannot move or capture video or audio, and a dedicated red LED is illuminated to match the red status indicator on the screen.

(With Inputs From IANS)