Amazon Has a Top-Secret Plan to Build Home Robots

After making smart speakers a household product (at least to some), Amazon seems to have found its next big consumer product: robots. Amazon is building smart robots that are equipped with cameras that let them drive around homes, Bloomberg reported Monday. These robots could launch as soon as next year. From the report: Codenamed "Vesta," after the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, the project is overseen by Gregg Zehr, who runs Amazon's Lab126 hardware research and development division based in Sunnyvale, California. Lab126 is responsible for Amazon devices such as the Echo speakers, Fire TV set-top-boxes, Fire tablets and the ill-fated Fire Phone.

The Vesta project originated a few years ago, but this year Amazon began to aggressively ramp up hiring. There are dozens of listings on the Lab 126 Jobs page for openings like "Software Engineer, Robotics" and "Principle Sensors Engineer." People briefed on the plan say the company hopes to begin seeding the robots in employees' homes by the end of this year, and potentially with consumers as early as 2019, though the timeline could change, and Amazon hardware projects are sometimes killed during gestation.

And only Will Smith can stop them!

[Kenja]

I assume.... and perhaps it's the Will Smith from tested.com

Re:

[Tablizer]

Will Smith gave in. The last sentence of his autobiography reads, "I now love Big Brother and robots; they are one in the same."

Is Bezos a prisoner?

[goombah99]

Is he trying to send us a secret message about the amazon clouds evil plans?

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[q4Fry]

I'm sorry, his responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.

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[ShanghaiBill]

If it is just a "camera and speaker with wheels", with no ability to navigate stairs or open doors, then that has been done before, and is not very useful. If it can do more, there is no mention of that in the video to TFA.

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[Oswald McWeany]

If it is just a "camera and speaker with wheels", with no ability to navigate stairs or open doors, then that has been done before, and is not very useful. If it can do more, there is no mention of that in the video to TFA.

"Been done before" doesn't mean it won't be successful with Amazon's vast marketing department and public good-will.

Smart phones had been done before the iPhone. Smart watches had been done before the pebble. Electric vehicles had been done before Tesla. That didn't stop those companies launching successful products.

As for "not very useful", no, probably not, but "cutesy and cool" will gather market share- it will be a self navigating Alexa most likely. I'm sure sell a few hundred thousand of them and

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[gnick]

no ability to navigate stairs or open doors, then that has been done before

Daleks don't need stairs; they level the building.

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[vtcodger]

Yep. If I had a TOP SECRET plan, the first thing I'd do is tell Bloomberg News about it.

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[Lunix Nutcase]

Does it involve mycleanpc.com?

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[LifesABeach]

listened, for a little bit, to your rant about /. i cannot help but wonder why buy /.? why not just start your own version of /.? and make it the way you would like to see /.?

Huh..

[Anonymous Coward]

not so "top-secret" if I can read about it on slashdot

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[cascadingstylesheet]

not so "top-secret" if I can read about it on slashdot

That makes you an insider! Aren't you excited??

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[Gr8Apes]

not so "top-secret" if I can read about it on slashdot

That makes you an insider! Aren't you excited??

I feel like 1 in a million

Alexa sexbot

[Anonymous Coward]

Prime membership unlocks multiple new positions!

Oh that's great!

[DaMattster]

There is no way in the shady side of hell that I would ever let an Amazon robot inside my home. Given the IoT security problems and the like, I couldn't trust it not to get hacked by voyeur or have it collect data from some of the most intimate parts of my life. Amazon can go suck some huge green balls!

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[DontBeAMoran]

The problem is, once x% of the population does something, it's easier for governments to push laws that requires you to do it, too.

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[jetkust]

And on top of that, in 10 years, he'll be posting on Slashdot through his Amazon robot.

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[PeopleAquarium]

It would be too computationally expensive to house the 'brains' inside the robot. Far cheaper to stream it's interactions to the cloud. Most people will gladly trade their privacy for a robot that can wash the dishes, or do the laundry though. People trade it now just to play Farmville.

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[PeopleAquarium]

So you think it's less expensive to house the brains for an army of these robots in some giant datafarm than in people's homes?

Yes, because it is. Shared resources make things like machine learning, speech recognition, and image recognition much cheaper at scale. There are a ton of products doing it this way already. Additionally, the average person can't afford and does not want, a rack full of servers in their home, and even if they did... they couldn't afford it. However, by sharing that rack full of servers with other users many more people can effectively share the same hardware and bring prices down to a reasonable level.

The network connections to these datafarms add a huge latency, and if the CPU needs are non-trivial, it is just not practical to offload the load to the server farm.

The

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[Anne Thwacks]

Eventually, the car will have a local CPU as failback, and will operate with reduced functionality when a connection is unavailable or unsuitable.

Like when it is out of the showroom?

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[Anne Thwacks]

Brains?

Think of the Zombies!

Re:Oh that's great!

[RobinH]

It's already "hacked" by a voyeur: Amazon! There was an article last year about the Roomba (or Neato?) CEO saying he wanted to collect information about the inside of your home and sell it. This Amazon stuff (Alexa, robot) is exactly for this purpose. Forget that.

suspicious promo codes...

[harvey the nerd]

Should have been more suspicious about that promo code, CIAFBIFSB

Spammatic [Re:Oh that's great!]

[Tablizer]

A roaming bot with a camera could be a big source of sales and related spam. The bot could tell what's worn out or missing from your home, and forward suggestions of replacement products of a matching size and style preference to Alexa, your email inbox, and/or web ads. It could become the ultimate targeted spam engine: Truman Show for the masses.

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[Tablizer]

Amazon can go suck some huge green balls!

Careful what you ask for; they're working on a pleasure bot.

Alexa?

[bobstreo]

"No matter what I said before, please tell the robot to stop killing Jehova's Witnesses when they come to the door."

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[Anonymous Coward]

Do it before?

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[Tablizer]

No no, you don't snuff them, you refer them to the Mormons.

Where's Rosie, the robotic maid?

[mark-t]

I sort of expect that nobody who is alive today will see it be a reality, however.

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[OrangeTide]

A Roomba doesn't have enough sass to truly replace Rosey the Robot.

Notably in the Jetsons people didn't normally buy household robots, they rented them. Perhaps that's a business model still worth exploring.

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[Anne Thwacks]

Notably in the Jetsons people didn't normally buy household robots, they rented them.

You mean like robot365?

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[mark-t]

The sass is a cool nice to have, but honestly, I'd settle entirely for just being able to actually automate the butler/maid functionality properly.

A roomba can vacuum a level floor, but can't move furniture to vacuum underneath it, nor vacuum the sofa or bed to clear them of cat hair.

A roomba will also not put dishes in the dishwasher and put them away when they are clean, it will not do your laundry for you and neatly fold all laundry and put them in their appropriate place when clean.

Not to mention

"Principal" not "Principle"

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon's job site has it right. The article author has it wrong. A principal is a chief or head, particularly of a school. Principal can also be used as an adjective meaning “first or highest in rank, importance, or value,” as in The principal objective of this article is to teach you the difference between two words. A principle, on the other hand, is “rule of action or conduct” or “a fundamental doctrine or tenet.” http://www.dictionary.com/e/pr... [dictionary.com]

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[MerlynEmrys67]

Amazon marketing announces new project formerly code named Vesta

There, is that about right?

I can't wait for it to respond to a request with..

[8127972]

.... "I'm sorry Jeff, I'm afraid I can't do that."

If people are comfortable with the idea

[MerlinTheWizard]

of having trojan horses inside their homes, why not.

Really? No kidding?

[Ulfilas2000]

Take an Alexa, stick some wheels on it and a motor and voila, home robot. Who's surprised?

Loyalty

[sdinfoserv]

The main difference between an Amazon, Google or FB robot or any smart assistant is loyalty. All the shows and cartoons we grew up that had robots - we still wish for - have their loyalty to us, the owners. They assist us, perform tasks for us, and protect us, till their own demise if necessary.
Today's "robots" won't be "owned" by us. You will will "lease the right to use them for X period of time". Make no mistake, these self moving spy devices will maintain their allegiance to the corporate overlord for the sole purpose of injecting themselves into your most personal thoughts and decisions, in the very fabric of your personal life so they can continually monitor, digest, live stream and sell to the highest bidder. oh, and share with any acronym agency when the secret court demands.
Even if they "agree" not sell your data directly - it will be completely scrap able via api's.

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[LifesABeach]

One idea is that the device will be continuously transmitting data to its owner. Another bother is when one lives at the beach, rust and termites are always present.

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[Comrade Ogilvy]

If termites are such a problem, I will have a lot of trouble hacking it with my sonic screwdriver.

Rosie! Get me a fire extinguisher!

[sdinfoserv]

Rosie, quick, get me a fire extinguisher, the sauce has started on fire!
Mrs. Jetson, I see your extinguisher is getting old. Would you not prefer a new extinguisher certified in all 50 states including the new California standard? I find 7 models available, 4 with prime memberships and 2 with same day shipping? Shall I order the highest rated extinguisher for you?
No! Rosie, quick! bring me the one under the sink!
I'm sorry Mrs. Jetson, I see that your existing extinguisher does not comply with the lat

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[LifesABeach]

Well, using accidents that happen the home would be a good way to test the device. Also, the test that simulates a Tornado.

What's it for?

[ath1901]

So the news is that Amazon might build a "home robot" but nobody knows what it might do. Have Alexa follow you around the house? Great... That's underwhelming to say the least.

What could you possibly do with small floor based robot with no limbs? The only useful thing I can think of is to remove the camera and stick a vacuum cleaner in there. I'm sure no one has thought of that yet...

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[LifesABeach]

I'm thinking of the house keeping machine featured on the Jetsons. It was funny then, now?

OK Amazon, Here Is What I Need

[LifesABeach]

A machine that can clean my 3 story home; no, I am not joking. This machine also has to be able to repair and maintain my home. I would respectfully suggest getting this request "full filled." Honestly, I am already looking. Cooking will be the next requested upgrade.

Nope.

[briancox2]

Not any more they don't.

Guaranteed to Fail

[Required Snark]

Just like Google Glasses.

The key phrase: "the company hopes to begin seeding the robots in employees' homes". The pool of Google employees is a demographic that relates to no other demographic in the world except other massive Silicon Valley companies or Microsoft. What other group is extremely well educated, has a high income, an extremely skewed rate of people on the Asperger spectrum, very limited cultural diversity, a glaring lack of women, and is completely immersed in technology?

Let's face it: Googl