Recognizing that it’s difficult to crack the home robotics market, Amazon is bringing its Astro robot to a decidedly more corporate audience.
The company today was announced Astro for Business, which repurposes Astro as a security bot for small and medium business customers. Astro for Business adds many new features to Astro, including the ability to create multiple safety monitoring routes and send alerts when the robot hears the sounds of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms or broken glass.
“[T]Radiant security solutions can be too static or expensive for what businesses need. We think Astro for Business can help with that,” said Anthony Robson, head of product for Amazon Astro, in a canned statement.
However, Astro for Business isn’t exactly cheap, starting at $2,349.99 — especially when you consider that you’ll need to sign up for additional plans to get the full value from the service.
To save video history and sync Astro with Ring alarms and motion detectors, Astro for Business customers must pay $20 per month for Ring Protect Pro. Astro’s patrol and alert features, called Astro Secure, aren’t free — they cost $60 a month on their own. Human agency support and monitoring costs $99 per month and requires Ring Protect Pro and Astro Secure subscriptions.
Astro for Business — which is only available in the US at launch — includes a four-month trial of Ring Protect Pro and Astro Secure, but the cost is sure to add up.
Priced this high, Astro for Business appears to be an attempt to extract what value Amazon can get from Astro, which was conspicuously absent from the company’s annual devices and services showcase this year. Amazon’s vice president of consumer robotics, Ken Washington, recently stepped down, and Astro remains an invitation-only product, roughly two years after its unveiling.
“Even Amazon can’t figure out what Astro is,” my colleague Haje wrote in an article. Actually.
