Amazon ramps up ‘mobile Alexa’ home robot development
According to reports, a prototype of the robot – codenamed “Vesta” – measures about “waist-high,” has wheels, and is capable of moving around on its own using built-in computer vision cameras. It can be controlled, say the reports, by Alexa voice commands.
The robot is being developed by Amazon Lab126, the company’s San Francisco Bay Area research and development team that designs and engineers high-profile consumer electronic devices like the Amazon Echo, Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers, and Amazon Fire TV. According to Bloomberg, the robot was originally planned to launch this year, but is not yet ready for mass production.
However, says Bloomberg, Amazon has recently reassigned engineers from other projects to work on Vesta, suggesting that the company is still planning to launch Vesta at some point. The project could be viewed, say some, as a sort of mobile Alexa – Amazon’s digital virtual assistant.
Amazon has continued to invest heavily in robotics for its warehouses and recently announced it was field testing a sidewalk robot delivery system, so a home robot at some point would be a logical step.
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