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When Amazon released the smart speaker Echo and Echo Dot, the company enabled its customers to start relying on machines for some of the more mundane tasks in their lives. This includes making calls, controlling appliances at home, and of course, browsing the web. Now, Amazon is thinking of creating robots that can basically function as smart speakers but are considerably more mobile.
As Bloomberg points out, Amazon has a remarkable track record of setting technological trends that lead to global movements starting with its online distribution service and the Kindle. It seems that the company has now set its sights on creating actual robot helpers for private homes with a project codenamed “Vesta.”
Leading the project is head of Lab126, Gregg Zehr, which is the department responsible for many of Amazon’s top hardware products. The merchant giant has been aggressively hunting for talented individuals recently with expertise in robotics. Job openings with titles like “Software Engineer, Robotics” and “Principle Sensors Engineer” have been posted on the lab’s page.
Naturally, this set off alarms for publications and inside sources actually told Bloomberg that the company is hoping to start shipping these mobile Echoes by 2019. As always, Amazon has chosen to keep mum on the issue, responding to requests for a comment with its usual refusal to say anything about what it considers “rumors and speculation.”
As The Verge notes, regardless of the absence of specific information on this issue, it’s safe to assume that a robot butler that’s capable of doing house chores might be beyond current technology. It’s more than likely that what Amazon will be able to provide is a more sophisticated version of a Roomba.
Even so, if it actually manages to catch on, it might spark yet another revolution that could lead to more advancements in the area of robotics and the Internet of Things. A lot of this could even be due to the information that the robot would be able to gather as it zooms around homes.
