Amazon gives its Astro robot new features, but it’s still not available to the general public

Today at Amazon’s press-only event, Kindle Scribe, Eero expanding mesh networks with Echo, updated Echo Dot and Studio speakers, and an Echo dashboard accessory were revealed. Like last year, there was also talk of an Amazon Astro robot that can roll around houses equipped with a digital smile, camera and microphones. This time around, Amazon has detailed the new and planned features of Astro; however, a year after its original announcement, Astro remains an invitation-only experimental product.

Astro is a 17.3×9.8 inch robot with Alexa, smart display, microphones, speakers, night vision LEDs, periscope camera, cup holder, and visual simultaneous location and mapping (V-SLAM) for navigating people’s homes and unexpected obstacles such as a dropped object. You need to request an invite in order to pay $1,000 for a bot.

Amazon appears to still be accepting invite requests, developing new features ahead of expected mass availability, whenever that may be. Today’s Amazon event didn’t provide any updates for Astro seeing the public availability (we’ve asked Amazon and will update this story if we get any response).

Announced today, the pet detection feature sounds like it could make life easier when away from your beloved animal. Astro supposedly can find your pet in the house and send you a short video of it. This feature also allows you to appear on the Astro display if your pet misses you as much as you miss them or needs a familiar voice.

Amazon also announced the ability to teach Astro to learn about windows or doors in your home so it can alert you with an image and text if they’re open or closed when they shouldn’t be. If something is wrong, Astro can warn you, including if you are not at home, by sending you an image and text. You can also ask Astro to check a specific window or door that you taught him about.

This feature works with the help of AI double action: Astro looks at the object, and you describe the object to Astro. Astro gives you the opportunity to let him know if something is wrong so he can improve.

The next step is more thorough object identification, starting with furniture and pet food bowls, said Ken Washington, vice president of devices and services at Amazon.

But while many consumers still can’t buy and try Astro, Amazon will continue to experiment with the robot in a new market: small and medium businesses (SMBs).

Amazon hopes Astro will fit the physical security needs of SMBs and minimum budgets. Amazon has indicated that Astro is working with Amazon Ring security cameras. If Ring uses the Virtual Security Guard feature, which is also limited in availability according to the website, Astro will boldly move to the site of the intrusion. He can then communicate with “professional surveillance agents,”according to Washington’s blog, via video and two-way voice.

Amazon said it will test the feature with a small group of business customers “in the coming months.”However, if successful, we might see this feature appeal to even the most cautious residential customers.

Once launched, Astro could be one of the most affordable consumer robots backed by the tech giant and an ecosystem of compatible products. But judging by reviews from Astro this year, there’s a lot of work to be done before expecting such a successful product launch.

TechCrunch in May, for example, noted the lack of clear direction from Amazon regarding the product and struggled to find a need for the expensive technology. CNET agreed that Astro lacked a “convincing use case”as it was an experimental Day 1 Edition product (Astro was still considered a Day 1 Edition product at the time of writing) . And thanks to Amazon services like Alexa and a Ring’s Protection Pro subscription, The Verge has turned the home robot into an “Echo Show on Wheels.”

So it makes sense that Amazon is still working on customizing the robot so that it can look not only as useful as possible, but as necessary as possible, given its high price and limited priority for such robots, especially in homes. After all, it’s not just about Astro; Amazon is looking to build more than one home consumer robot, Washington told GeekWire in June.

It’s also not surprising that Astro’s strategy is moving forward with a stronger focus on business, as many new technologies such as mixed reality devices and smart glasses have done to stay relevant.

To encourage the development of even more Astro features, Amazon is sharing the software development kit it used to build the aforementioned pet detection feature with three schools known for their robotics developments, Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland, and the University of Michigan.

For now, it seems that the next news about Astro will be about further development of the software and not the full public version. And for a robot that’s expected to cost $1,500, when it sees the public version, it’s probably for the best.