Amazon Launches Home Robot, Tesla Works On Its Own: Ready For The Robot Revolution?

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN has announced the launch of its feature-rich home robot.

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What Happened: Amazon launched its Astro home robot, which allows for home monitoring with Alexa, detecting intruders, carrying objects from one person to another, checking if you turned off the stove when you are away and knows how to navigate the home.

The robot also allows for video calls and follows users around while also performing all Alexa-powered actions such as playing music or controlling smart home devices.

Astro also has a privacy button that turns off microphones, cameras and motion sensors as well as the opportunity to set out-of bound zones in the app to prevent the robot from accessing some areas.

The product is now available only to customers who received an invite for $999, but it will become available to all consumers at $1,450 in the future. Users can also sign up for the invite program and the requests will be granted later this year, expecting to ship the products before 2022.

Ready For Our New Robot Overlords?

Amazon's new product follows a late August presentation by Tesla Inc. TSLA CEO Elon Musk of the upcoming Tesla Bot — a humanoid robot 5 feet, 8 inches tall, capable of carrying 45 pounds at 5 miles per hour. It weighs weighing 125 pounds and is capable of deadlifting 150 pounds. The product — which is still in the earliest stages of development — is meant to eliminate dangerous, repetitive and boring tasks.

To reassure those afraid of a robot world takeover, Musk pointed out that the robot's max speed of 5 miles per hour is a limitation meant to ensure that it can be easily outrun by a human, and its strength means that you should be able to "hopefully overpower it."

Its face will be a screen for "useful information," it will be made out of "lightweight materials," and it will have "human-level hands" and 40 electromechanical actuators.

The Tesla Bot will leverage machine vision and artificial intelligence technology developed for the firm's self-driving cars. It will feature autopilot cameras and a full self-driving computer that will run neural networks for interpreting the data fed from the cameras, planning its actions, labeling objects in its environment, simulating actions and tools.

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