Amazon Astro

Astro

Manufacturer	Amazon
Inventor	Amazon
Country	U.S.
Year of creation	2021
Price	US$1,000; by invitation only
Type	Domestic robot
Purpose	Home monitoring, virtual assistant

Amazon Astro, often shortened to Astro, is a home robot developed by Amazon.com, Inc. It was designed for home security monitoring, remote care of elderly relatives, and as a virtual assistant that can follow a person from room to room.

Features

Tom's Guide called the device "Alexa on wheels" and everything available on the Amazon Echo Show 10 is on this new device. The Astro has visual ID and should be able to recognize different family members and send an alert if the device sees someone in the home it does not recognize.

Hardware

Processors	2× Qualcomm QCS605; 1× Qualcomm SDA660; 1× Amazon AZ1 Neural Edge
Display	10.1-inch touchscreen, 1280 × 800 resolution
Cameras	1× 5MP bezel camera; 1× 1080p periscope camera with 132° diagonal field of view; vision in both visible and infrared light
Speakers	2× 55 mm front-firing speakers, 1× passive bass radiator
Battery	Lithium-ion
Connectivity	USB-C; WiFi 802.11ac; Bluetooth
Dimensions	16.7 in. L × 9.8 in. W × 17.3 in. H (424 mm × 250 mm × 440 mm)
Weight	20.6 lbs (9.35 kg)

Media response

Mark Gurman of Bloomberg News says that, six months after its release, hardly anyone was talking about Astro online, and that Amazon had shipped only a few hundred units, at most. David Priest of CNET observes that "For now, this robot remains a luxury item, for people with a lot of money to try out a cutting-edge technology that still lacks a compelling use case." Lauren Goode of Wired magazine labels Astro as "a robot for the sake of a robot" and "a robot without a cause, at least for now".

See also

• Smart speaker