[imagesource: Amazon]

Amazon has just rolled out a rather adorable little home assistant robot that comes packed with a few of the company’s AI technology features.

Meet Astro, which is basically an Alexa on wheels, if only a touch smarter and more capable.

It has been pitched as a companion robot, and with eyes that emote like a little dog, it might feel more like a pet than an assistant.

Although, it does have a few more uses than a dog, such as remote home security monitoring, remote elder care, and providing entertainment and convenience.

You can ask it to follow you around as you do things, meet you in a specific room, have it play music or podcasts, ask it to set reminders, timers, or take a photo.

Astro can be also be used for video calling through Alexa’s calling service, per The Verge:

The Astro’s ability to recognise faces means it knows who it’s looking at and can play a greeting or turn on your favourite music when it sees you.

It’s designed to learn your habits, so if you end up using it most of the time in the kitchen, it will park itself there.

Those might already be red flags, masked by its emotive eyes designed to make Astro feel more a part of the home than just any old robot.

The promo video shows Astro and all its capabilities in action:

While Amazon made a point of assuring everyone that the Astro will respect privacy, CNET reports that there are critics out there who have seen past the doe eyes and goofy domestic tasks.

Gizmodo is calling it a “sly little cyber-pet”, which in reality is both a “privacy nightmare and a dysfunctional mess”:

…Astro’s a cold, hard bundle of wires and gears devoted mostly to scooping up and analysing as much of your personal information as possible…

Leaked documents show that much of that data is collected to help serve the robot’s “security” function. Referred to internally within Amazon as “Vesta” (the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth), the robot can apparently be put into “Sentry” mode, which enables it to patrol the home for people or events that it doesn’t recognise.

When it meets someone whose face it hasn’t yet stored in its database, it proceeds to stalk them around the house, collecting and storing data on them, until told to stop. Fun!

The privacy concerns don’t stop at “Sentry” mode:

The robot is also built to be paired with Amazon Ring, the company’s odious home security apparatus that doubles as an informal surveillance network for police departments across the country.

After pairing, Astro would ostensibly respond to events connected to Ring, patrolling the house if an alarm went off.

If it isn’t privacy that makes this robot unattractive, it is its limited functionality, which could very easily see itself thrown down the stairs.

Especially when you consider the laundry list of things it can’t do:

It can’t go outside; it can’t go up or down stairs; it has no arms or appendages to open doors or cabinets; and it can’t help you move or get up if you’ve fallen down.

Sure, it can deliver an ice cold beer to a specific person, but someone still has to get the beer out of the fridge and put it in the back of the Astro before telling it where to go.

It can show you that the oven was left on, but it has no ability to press the buttons itself to turn it off.

Amazon knows that people will be dubious about having a camera and microphone following them around the house, which is one reason why they aren’t fully launching it to the public yet.

Instead, it is being released via a limited, invite-only system (at a set introductory price of $999,99) before a more robust launch to the public.

That is around R15 000 by the way.

Not sure who would pay that much for a robot that watches you and doesn’t even vacuum, but anyway.

[sources:verge&cnet&gizmodo]