Amazon’snew robot is designed to zip around your house and serve as a faithful watchdroid.
With big round blinking eyes, Astro is reminiscent of Pixar’sWall-Eand just as cute.
“Who knows what data they could harvest from a robot that travels around your home?”
The robot, available by invite only for the moment, costs $1,000.
The price will jump to $1,450 when it’s released more broadly.
The bot is operated via an app that also receives Astro’s alerts.
The app is used as well to drive the robot around and see what it sees.
It isn’t even the first Amazon product designed to move about your house.
Last year, the giant retailer unveiled itsAlways Home Cam, a flyingRingsecurity camera.
It can’t be remotely accessed and controlled.
It also potentially gives police a new way to see inside your home.
Users can also manually switch off its cameras and microphones whenever they want.
In addition, an easy-to-see light indicates when Astro is streaming audio or video to the cloud.
The person also said the robot is a “privacy nightmare.”
But the same can’t be said when it comes to privacy.
“They’re pretty slippery about saying one thing and then acting questionably,” Caltrider says.
“I don’t trust them and I wouldn’t recommend that others trust them.”
But it’ll still retain a record of you ordering that cream.
And getting particular recordings deleted can sometimes be tricky, she says.
