Astro Overview

Astro

Introduction

Amazon.com, Inc. developed the home robot known as Amazon Astro, or just Astro. It was created as a virtual assistant that can follow a person from room to room, for home security monitoring, remote care for senior family members, and for these purposes.

The Amazon Astro looks just like an on-wheels Echo Show 10 smart display in appearance. With the same 10.1-inch screen, 5-megapixel camera on the bezel, USB C port, WIFI, Bluetooth, two front-facing 55mm speakers, and passive bass radiator, you can video chat, albeit at an odd angle. Similar to Echo Shows, Astro has Alexa built in. Among other things, Alexa can play music, stream TV shows, provide weather information, and tell jokes. Another reference for look is just a little like Wall E the cartoon character.

Astro has a means to alter its perspective because it is so close to the earth. Near the mute and volume controls, a periscope that protrudes from the device’s swiveling head adds a 12-megapixel camera as well as an additional 5-megapixel camera. These are useful for taking selfies and, more realistically, for remotely navigating the house while you’re gone.

Astro’s wheels are what make it unique. To help Astro efficiently map your home and navigate when given simple voice directions like “go to the bedroom” or “carry this drink to Andrew in the living room,” the Amazon research team modified navigation technology previously used for robot vacuums. Though it feels a little less developed at this young age of Astro’s life, personality is another differentiator. As opposed to Echo devices, Astro combines Alexa’s personality, the Amazon voice assistant, and its own eccentric personality, which is communicated through two animated eyes and a variety of amusing sounds [The beep boops toots]. Although this personality is still developing, it gives the little robot a distinctive taste from its Amazon-made competitors for smart displays.

How well does the robot work?

Astro performs quite a number of tasks, all to various degrees of effectiveness and efficiency. Here is a breakdown of each of the fundamental use categories and an explanation of how Amazon’s tiny robot actually carried out each task. The CNET Smart Home, where majority of the testing was done, took Astro far longer than the app’s claimed 30 minutes to map. Astro failed to map the house because the floors were too shiny, the windows near the charging station were too bright, or the exposed staircase leading from the entryway and surrounded by a railing might be interfering with the mapping process (the Amazon representative couldn’t be sure while troubleshooting by phone). The solution to this problem anyways was quickly figured out. What was done in order to reduce the light and give Astro a more distinct, wall-like boundary, was covering the windows and railing with cardboard. Astro was then instructed to map the floor, and it was successful.

If you don’t encounter these issues, Astro’s setup is fast and easy, and it provides you with some creative ideas for using the robot. But as a product, it still needs some development. Although railing-enclosed staircases are a common architectural detail, Astro is still learning how to map them. To be fair, though, when it had mapped the floor, the cardboard was taken out, and Astro managed to navigate the remainder of the time in the house without any major issues. So we can actually give it credit for its retentive memory.

What about the security aspect?

The most applied situation for Astro may be as a home security bot, a mobile camera that you can use to manually patrol your home while you’re away or to place on automatic patrol in conjunction with your Ring and Alexa Guard security systems. Astro as a remote-controlled camera is preferred by most of its users. Astro chimes to alert residents that they are likely to be captured on camera when you open the live feed on the app. The periscope cam then emerges from its housing, allowing you to see the house in real time.

You may use the app to move around the room by using the forward and backward buttons, tapping locations on the feed, or choosing which rooms you want the bot to head toward. Additionally, you may swipe left or right to make the bot turn, and you can slide the periscope up or down to see things from a new angle.

Another method to utilize Astro as a security tool is to combine it with your Ring Protect Pro subscription so that it may patrol your home and alert you when someone enters while you’re gone and send you notifications.

According to a user of the ring protect pro tool “The security configuration ended up being at least as complicated as the initial mapping setup. Simply said, I couldn’t get my Ring app to find and link with Astro. I spent an hour messing around, unplugging and replugging my Ring account with my Alexa account, which reset all of my Echo smart speakers and smart displays (at least six of them), and then I contacted my Amazon contact again to troubleshoot. To cut a long story short, I was instructed to remove our Blink camera account from our Alexa account as well as all of our Ring cameras from the app. I did that, and Astro and Ring teamed up successfully.”

Running errands?

The main thing that sets Astro apart from other smart displays is its mobility. This implies that you aren’t only limited to asking for information; you may also request assistance with a variety of household activities, like as bringing your children snacks or reminding your spouse to take out the trash.

Unfortunately, Astro can’t do much by itself. We know chores such as take out the trash or travel long distances or even load the drinks or snacks to be delivered would have really been an amazing feature but that will take a while to produce. While Astro makes use of a lot of the navigational technology used by more recent robot vacuums, you will still need to vacuum your own floors. This demonstrates how skillful Astro’s navigation is. It moves rapidly and effectively across the house, adapting to environmental changes like shoes left by the front entrance or doors along one route remaining closed. And the longer it stays in your home, the more adept it gets at finding its way around.

This is possibly Astro’s biggest triumph to date. Additionally, it’s not only because robot vacuums have already accomplished it. The navigational system now used by robot vacuums for vacuuming has to be modified by Amazon’s developers for a totally different use. While Astro isn’t completely covering your floor, it is traveling considerably more fast because to the constantly shifting surroundings.

Aside from the rough setup, there was only one minor issue: Astro generally ignores obstructions that are less than one inch tall. This meant that while attempting to drive over my kids’ blocks, it got stuck once or twice. It also ran without hesitation over the phony dog excrement.

Privacy

With Astro, Amazon has made a significant effort to safeguard your privacy by storing and processing the majority of its navigation and face recognition functions on the device. You can remove your inquiry history on the Alexa app just like you can on Alexa-enabled smart speakers and displays.

Although we’ve gone into more detail about the security and privacy concerns of Astro elsewhere, my main worry is that, like many other products on the market, Astro is sneaking even more cameras into homes. Although Amazon’s security precautions appear to be strong, cameras are susceptible to hacking, and when cameras are used, what is typically considered private frequently becomes public.

Pricing

Astro, a new robot assistant from Amazon, costs $1,000 and is only available by invitation. But is the bot actually worth the $1,000 early-access pricing— let alone the $1,450 price tag Amazon wants to give it once it becomes officially available? Not yet. For the time being, this robot is still a luxury item for wealthy individuals who want to experiment with cutting-edge technology but don’t yet have a compelling use case.

Acceptability in the market.

According to Mark Gurman of Bloomberg News, only a small number of Astro units had been distributed by Amazon and, six months after its availability, hardly anyone was talking about it online. “For now, this robot remains a luxury item, for folks with a lot of money to try out a cutting-edge technology that still lacks a compelling use case,” writes David Priest of CNET. “For now, this robot remains a luxury item, for folks with a lot of money to try out a cutting-edge technology that still lacks a compelling use case,” writes David Priest of CNET.