Amazon Forms New Home Robotics Team to Develop a “World-First” Robot Product

Amazon has formed a new home robotics team in recent months to develop a “world-first robot product.” According to Sina Finance, Jeff Bezos directed a group of senior device executives in 2017 to build a home robot, and the team developed Astro, priced at $1,450, within a few years. First shown at Amazon’s fall 2021 event, Astro is a wheeled tablet with Alexa that can navigate a home, recognize faces and serve as a mobile security monitor. It remained invite-only and shipped to only a few thousand customers. Amazon also launched a business-focused Astro in 2023 but discontinued it less than a year later. A recently deleted engineering job listing said, “Robots are about to leave the movies and enter our homes,” and described a product that could navigate “dynamic home environments” and “operate autonomously alongside family members.” Amazon has continued pursuing Bezos’s home robotics ambition despite Astro’s setbacks. CEO Andy Jassy wrote in his latest annual shareholder letter that AI and robotics are “one of the biggest inflection points of our lifetime,” adding that Amazon seeks to anticipate what will make customers’ lives easier and better and invent the next inflection point. Barclays forecast in a January report that the global humanoid robot market, currently valued at $2 billion to $3 billion, could reach about $40 billion by 2035, or as much as $200 billion in the most optimistic scenario.