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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Astro Robot

Amazon’s Roving Robot Gets a Job. Will Restaurants & Retail Bite?

In 2021, Amazon surprised company watchers when it rolled out a house-roving robot named Astro. At launch, Amazon’s cute little robot was primarily intended for domestic duties, helping out as a home security and as a roaming Alexa speaker.

Reception was tepid, however, mainly because the robot didn’t seem to do much other than act as a mobile speaker and Ring camera, and the price tag was high at $999 (and soon went higher to $1599).

Now, Amazon hopes to give its mobile robot a purpose in life by pushing it into the workplace. This week, the company announced “Astro For Business,” which the company says is “a security solution for small and medium-sized businesses that combines robotics, smart security, and artificial intelligence (AI).”

As part of the pitch, Amazon is hawking associated subscription services (of course they are), such as Ring video monitoring and a new service called “Astro Secure,” a new security subscription plan tied to Astro that will allow it to perform custom patrol routes and scheduled patrols.

The transition of Astro into the workplace makes some sense, particularly given the high price tag for Astro (which will now be $2,350 for Astro for Business) and the more obvious use case of a roving security guard for a small robot that doesn’t do much more than move around and watch things.

According to Amazon, the company has been trialing Astro in the workplace over the past year, including one food and beverage business in Hapa. According to Hapa COO Jonathan Hebel, the Astro has helped keep an eye on the kitchen and give peace of mind around potential fire hazards.

“We use industrial ovens that, if not turned off properly, can easily start a fire,” said Hebel. “I used to drive back to the office at all hours if I wasn’t confident they were shut down. Now, with Astro, I’m able to check in via live view and triple-check that the ovens are off at any time—whether it’s 6 p.m. or 2 a.m.”

Amazon’s new retail and business focus for Astro makes me wonder if the company might eventually add additional customer-service-related features, turning Astro into a mobile shopper support bot. Amazon launched a business version of Alexa years ago, but I haven’t heard of any real-world use cases in which the company’s AI assistant in a customer service role. I have to wonder if that will change with the rollout of Astro for business.

As far as enterprise robots, Astro is pretty affordable and one of the few that isn’t sold through a robotics-as-a-service subscription plan. That said, I think it will need to add additional features (like customer service) before many small businesses bite.

And who knows? Maybe at some point, Amazon will take a cue from Tesla and build out a more human-like (and creepier) robot that can actually do stuff like lift things.

Robot Butlers & Roombas: Elon and Amazon Are Getting Serious About Building Home Robots

Last week, Amazon announced they were acquiring iRobot. The acquisition of the maker of the popular Roomba robotic vacuums comes less than a year after Amazon unveiled its own home robot, Astro.

The news came the same week we got a sneak preview of Optimus, Tesla’s robotic humanoid. After the preview, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he thinks the impact of the Optimus could someday exceed that of the company’s hugely popular electric vehicles.

“I’m sort of surprised that you know people are like analysts out there are not really understanding the importance of the Optimus robot,” Musk said. “My guess is Optimus will be more valuable than the car long term.”

While Musk has suggested his company’s robot will someday provide a nearly inexhaustible amount of “labor” (of the mechanized, non-human variety), he also outlined how the robot will also help us at home with everyday tasks.

“It should be able to, you know, please go to the store and get me the following groceries, that kind of thing,” he said.

For Amazon, much of the early hot takes on the company’s purchase of iRobot frame it as part of a larger effort by the online giant to better understand its customers. And no doubt, adding the home mapping capability of the Roomba to the already rich data profiles Amazon has through our purchase history and Alexa voice interactions will give the company an even better contextual understanding with which to sell us even more stuff.

But I also think Amazon is serious about becoming a leading platform builder in home robotics. Robotics are just a natural evolution of the smart home – something us old-timers used to call ‘home automation’ – and I expect the roboticization of the home will ultimately lead to a multi-hundred billion dollar market. Today’s consumer robot market – mostly products like the Roomba – is forecasted to be a $9 billion market next year. One can only imagine how big it will be once multipurpose, life-assisting robots that can do more than just clean our floors are widely available.

Astro was Amazon’s first toe in the water, and with Roomba’s huge patent portfolio and in-house expertise, I expect we’ll start to see much more interesting new products roll out from the company in coming years. One obvious product idea would be something like Labrador Retriever by Alexa Fund-backed Labrador Systems, a robotic beast of burden for everyday tasks.

One advantage both companies have is they can develop and amortize their robotic investments across both their industrial and consumer-facing markets. Industry has and always will lead in terms of automation adoption, and that’s partly why both companies have invested so much over the past decade in building out their robotics platforms; it gives them a strategic advantage in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics, and other parts of their core business.

Now, with all of the in-house IP and automation know-how, both are turning their eyes toward the consumer market. Amazon and Tesla – companies well known for having much longer-than-average time horizons when it comes to product road maps – have already gotten their first products ready for market. In Amazon’s case, they’ve just added North America’s biggest home robotics company to their portfolio and can now bulk up its home robotics lab launched a few years ago as part of Lab 126.

My biggest fear isn’t Amazon mapping my home, but instead that the home robotics market will be yet another duolopy dominated by a couple of technology giants. While others like Labrador and Hello Robot have exciting projects they are working on, do we really think Amazon or Tesla won’t be able to buy them or, in the case of Hello’s $20 thousand home assistant, beat them on price?

My guess is the two companies’ biggest competition will come from Asia, where Samsung, LG, Sony and a number of Chinese companies have been working hard on building robot platforms. Sony is particularly interesting to me given their interest in the intersection of cooking and robotics, which Samsung has also shown interest in.

Bottom line, with two of the world’s biggest technology companies – along with a lot of other big consumer product companies – finally getting serious about the home robotics market, we should all be prepared for the coming wave of home robot assistants – be their souped-up Roombas or robotic butlers – in the coming years.