The household robot market is said to grow to a whopping USD 9.1 billion by 2024. The Astro Home robot is one of Amazon’s newest additions to this growing market.
It serves as a home monitoring robot that makes use of a smart navigation system to move around your house. The robot makes use of sensors to avoid obstacles and navigate the home, keeping a safe distance from people, stairs, and even pets. Although the main function of the robot is to monitor activities in your home, with the use of the accompanying Astro app and Alexa it can do much more, such as notifying you of your calls, reminders, alarms, timers, or messages to and from inhabitants of your home. Astro can also be used for entertainment purposes, allowing users to play music, podcasts, and videos, whilst having Astro follow them from room to room. Astro has a mic and camera that support audio and video calls. These can also be disabled and re-enabled to maintain the privacy of the user, should they require it. Astro has a cubbyhole in the back of its main body, enabling users to deliver items to different people within the house.
When not in use, Astro remains on standby, close to the user to await instruction, and when needed Astro will navigate to its charger and load up its battery. Within the app, you can instruct Astro to check in on different rooms. Upon setup, Astro learns the floor plan and map of your home, allowing you to simply tap which room you would like to use. Astro has an in-built periscope which allows the user to get better views within the rooms.
The Astro robot can be bought with a 6-month Ring Pro Protects subscription to bolster Astro’s home security capabilities. It can be linked to a new or existing account. Ring, a very popular home security application, also makes use of camera surveillance. Coupling this with an Astro robot would allow for more dynamic and mobile coverage of each room.
More and more, people are willing to leave the menial tasks around the home to technology while they focus on more important things. This has created the perfect environment for household robots like Astro to succeed.
Specifications
Dimensions
Device: 16.7” L x 9.8” W x 17.3” H (424mm x 250mm x 440mm)
Charger: 11.0” L x 10.4” W x 5.0” H (280mm x 264mm x 127mm)
Weight
Device: 20.6 lbs (9.35 kg)
Charger: 3.9 lbs (1.75 kg)
Battery
Charge time: approx, 45 minutes
Battery type: Lithium-Ion rechargeable battery
Periscope height
Extends up to 42” from the floor
Display
10.1” HD touchscreen display, 1280×800 resolution
Cameras
5MP bezel camera
1080p Periscope camera with 132° diagonal field of view
WiFi connectivity
Dual band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac
Bluetooth connectivity
A2DP support
AVRCP support
Ports
USB-C
Audio
2.1 System: 2 x 55mm full range front-firing speakers and a passive bass radiator
Processor
2x Qualcomm QCS605, 1x Qualcomm SDA660, 1x processor with Amazon AZ1 Neural Edge
Requirements
To operate Astro, an active Amazon.com account, a compatible mobile device running iOS 13+ or Android 8+, and the Astro app are required
