Amazon Astro: from domestic robot to autonomous night warden
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This is what you call a rescue attempt after an epic fail. Following the resounding commercial flop of Astro, its household maintenance robot, Amazon has decided to change tack. Its mission as a smart domestic assistant having been mothballed, Astro will now opt for a career switch by becoming a night warden for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The history of Astro dates back to September 2021 when, with much fanfare, Amazon presented this intelligent domestic robot, equipped with Alexa, the American behemoth’s in-house artificial intelligence, a camera and a screen. Initially marketed in limited quantities and by invitation only, Astro’s goal was to be an intelligent and entertaining home companion, capable of helping out with numerous domestic tasks but also of conversing with its owners.
In practice, very different from the theory
And if, on its launch, Astro was received enthusiastically, with its cute looks and its displayed capabilities, it wasn’t very long before it was being mercilessly lambasted by its various purchasers.
In terms of its finishing touches first of all, Astro in fact has proven to be very fragile and minimally optimised. Its periscopes have a tendency to break or lock up incongruously. And to top it all, no remedy is available to return them to Amazon when that occurs.
Nor is its artificial intelligence system in perfect running order, either. Astro has a tendency to get lost … and throw itself down the stairs. Hardly ideal, obviously.
Finally, the Amazon robot has strange proclivities concerning privacy. In order to ‘familiarise itself with its environment’, it spends a long while mapping your interior and following in your footsteps like a little dog. If by chance it detects somebody unknown to it in your home, it launches a very extensive investigation by means of its internet access, records the sounds and movements, all in the name of your ‘home security’. Needless to say, any information about what happens to the collected data remains perfunctory, to say the least.
A new mission
In the face of all this criticism and the scant success it was having, Amazon thus decided to reorient Astro’s mission. The robot will now work to meet the specific needs of companies in terms of security. Capable of patrolling, detecting suspect noises such as smoke alarms, carbon monoxide and broken glass, Astro is now positioned as a trusty warden at the service of companies.
And it goes without saying that Amazon does not implement this transition at any cost. The American firm offers various subscriptions in addition to the initial outlay. To benefit from video recording and synchronisation with Ring alarms, for example, a Ring Protect subscription of 20 dollars per month is required. The Astro patrol and alarm functions, named Astro Secure, for their part cost 60 dollars per month. And these are just a few of the services billed as extra costs. Which just goes to show, for the wizards of business, behind a commercial failure, there are always new opportunities hidden.
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