Amazon has developed a new robot named Astro, which is made to move around the house and will work as a camera. It will work as a robot watchman around the house. This bot will definitely walk around old persons and will warn you if you left on your oven or stove. Astro can’t be distracted by anything and will keep its total focus.
The design is made with blinking eyes and looks more like the Pixar character named Wall-E. But many experts say users need to be careful as they are watching everything you do. The fear is that this technology released by Amazon is making it look like it’s sharing the data.
Amazon announced this last Tuesday and is available for selected persons for a whopping $1000 and will increase the price to around $1500 when it will be released for all. Amazon said that this smart robot is like Alexa with wheels, it can monitor and keep eyes on kids and can also do voice controls. It has an app for operating and receiving alerts from it. The app even lets you drive around and can show what it sees.
Can we trust Amazon on Astro?
Astro is like a question to us if we want robots roaming around in our home, it’s also about Amazon releasing a product that crosses the privacy insecurities. This isn’t the first product that Amazon released which moves around in our homes. A year back, they released a flying ring camera that would move around the house always.
Many users say with home cams like these they aren’t worried much about data because these robots are made to fly around said paths in our homes. We can’t change the path or control it. But, Astro is different, it has a new level of home surveillance. We can drive the bot however we want. But experts say that letting it collect the data will provide the police a way to see
Police can get a search warrant on Amazon so that they can access the data also by devices like Echo and webcams. According to a report, there were around 30,000 requests to access the data including warrants and court orders. This all happened within 6 months. If there was a warrant for Astro, it could automatically become a moving surveillance camera for the police.
Astro also gives a chance for hackers to steal the data from the bot. Amazon says that the privacy of the users is the main concern while designing Astro. They say most of the data is processed within itself. Users can also configure areas where the bot shouldn’t go. Even the microphone and camera can be turned off by ourselves.
There’s a light indicator that shows if the bot is streaming audio or video to the cloud. Only the phone which is connected and logged in with the same Amazon account can access the live camera and remote controls. Amazon said that customer trust is their priority, which is why they built Astro with much privacy and security controls to keep user’s data safe.
