Amazon, the online retail giant, according to Bloomberg, is reportedly working on a new project of building its first robot for the home. The Amazon home robot will be developed by the same Amazon R&D department that had previously built the Kindle, Fire Phone, and Echo. Seeing the popularity of the previous products that have been developed by the same department, we can only speculate that the new robotic Alexa for homes too is going to be a sensation.
It is not clear as of yet as to what sort of robot they will develop and what exactly it will do, but according to Bloomberg, it could be sort of like “mobile Alexa”, following the users around their house to places where they cannot speak directly to an Echo speaker. Amazon is planning to seed devices in their employees’ homes for testing of the device, and they will be released on the market as early as 2019.
The Amazon robot that the retail giant is thinking about developing will be a virtual assistant housed in some mechanical exterior. LG, Mayfield Robotics, and Pixar have previously developed robots like this. They act as a central point for the users’ smart homes allowing them to control Wi-Fi-connected devices and perform tasks like setting timers and searching the web. But they have proved to be some sort of disappointment, as the reviews regarding the performance of these robots suggest.
Their performance has proved to be a great disappointment. They have promised way more than they actually can deliver, and it should be noted that Amazon’s Echo does all of that just minus the hype. However, there may be some advantages to Amazon and for the users, too, as the data collected by the new robot will make Alexa function better.
The CEO and the maker of Roomba have admitted that the invention of such a mobile home robot will be important in the future as it would definitely make smart homes more intuitive. Amazon has not commented on it officially yet and it is too early to definitely state anything regarding this matter.
