Last year’s pitch, however, was that Astro would make home life more comfortable and enjoyable — a kind of cute, clumsy side-by-side. This year, Amazon revamped the Astro as a device with a much more serious mission: to provide a different set of eyes on our pets, our homes, and our livelihoods.
As with any surveillance technology you invite into your life, using Astro will require an element of trust. This time, however, you will extend that trust to a robot capable of moving around in your home. That may seem like a small change, but it makes a big difference not only in terms of how people interact with and view home robots, but also in how Amazon engages in our private lives.
However, Maya Cakmak, an assistant professor at the University of Washington and head of the Human-Centered Robotics Lab, said Astro’s compatibility with other aspects of the surveillance ecosystem Amazon’s family, Ring and Alexa, can set it up successfully. “Astro can provide these services seamlessly,” says Cakmak.
