Amazon introduced its new “household robot” Astro to the public on Sept. 28. It has left some people excited for the future of this new category of robotics, some frightened by the continued outreach that corporations are making into consumers’ homes and some scratching their heads, wondering why anyone would buy the robot at all.
The robot, currently priced at $999, is essentially a screen on two wheels. It can do things like help a person monitor their home while they are away and follow them around the house as a hands-free screen, along with doing anything an Alexa can do.
“In a world where faceless discs have dutifully sucked up carpet detritus for years, Astro is a category-defining robot that seeks to introduce us to a future of robots that extend well beyond the STEM-focused educational toys that dominate the fledgling category today,” said Ross Rubin, contributing writer for ZDNet, in a review of the robot.
Amazon is hoping that consumers will find a certain charm in Astro that they might not find in an Alexa, and they think that families who buy Astro will come to think of it as part of the family, as a sort of “robopet.”
“In testing, we’ve been humbled by the number of people who said Astro’s personality made it feel like a part of their family, and that they would miss the device in their home after it was gone.” said Charlie Tritschler, Vice President of Products at Amazon, in the company’s blog post introducing Astro.
The robot has come under some controversy, however, because of flaws in its design.
Sources who worked on the project told Vice that the versions of the robot that they worked on did not work well.
“Astro is terrible and will almost certainly throw itself down a flight of stairs if presented the opportunity. The person detection is unreliable at best, making the in-home security proposition laughable,” a source who worked on the project told Vice.
“They’re also pushing it as an accessibility device but with the masts breaking and the possibility that at any given moment it’ll commit suicide on a flight of stairs, it’s, at best, absurdist nonsense and marketing and, at worst, potentially dangerous for anyone who’d actually rely on it for accessibility purposes,” the source said.
These issues, along with some feeling the device does not really offer much in the way of innovation beyond Alexa, have led to many being critical of the high price point on Amazon’s Astro.
“It being mobile shouldn’t make the price go up that much,” said Jomar Lewis, senior biology major at Winthrop. “If it did more, then maybe you could justify that.”
