Voice In Canada Flash Briefing #1321

Well. It’s Teri here. It’s Friday. And, I want to tell you about this latest announcement from Amazon, and I’ve been alluding to it over the past couple of days.

Let’s get right to it. Astro. What is Astro? Astro is a household robot for home monitoring and to be your assistant with Alexa built-in.

And, it’s quite something. We have never seen anything like this before. It’s the first idea to have a robot really come to market.

I’ll tell you right off the bat right now that it is considered one of the day one edition products from Amazon, which means that it is only available exclusively by invitation at this point.

However, I find it fascinating that this is where Amazon is going. I remember seeing some pictures on social media a couple of years ago of Jeff Bezos touring some robotic facilities.

And I wondered at that time if this may be where Amazon’s going. The truth is, in the recent announcements, Amazon announced that they believe that in the next five to 10 years, homes will have robots.

And so, they said this is not the first robot that they are building. Anyway, Astro, what does it look like? I don’t know how to describe it.

You have to look it up and see the pictures. It kind of looks more like a little pet than a humanoid-type figure.

It’s got a couple of big wheels that help it get around. It’s got what looks like a neck with a screen.

It kind of looks more like a little pet than a humanoid-type figure

Astro the Household Robot for Home Monitoring

On the screen are some eyes that can move depending on what Astro is doing. Of course, it is voice-activated.

On their schematics, it shows that there’s like a cup holder at the back so you can use it to deliver things around the house.

And I find it very interesting that it looks more like a pet as opposed to a human.

And what are the implications for that in terms of the way that we as people will interact with this device? Anyway, you got to check it out. It’s called Astro.

You can see it on the Amazon.com site. Fascinating. All I know is that when I’m able to get when I’d love to try this in my home and see what it’s like.

Of course, there are huge privacy issues with this. Amazon says that that is something that they are very, very committed to protecting.

For example, they said that you can set up Astro so that there are certain rooms that are essentially no-go zones so you can prevent Astro from going to those rooms.

There are ways that you can turn off Astro entirely and so on. So, we’ll see. Really fascinating. A really exciting story.

I think there’s a lot here in terms of sci-fi movies, and well, you know, when I think about Astro, what was George Jetson’s pet name?

Wasn’t it Astro? I think it was. Anyway. This is a lot of fun. Look it up and have a look at Amazon’s new Astro, and I’d love to hear what you think.

Hit me up on Twitter, @DrTeriFisher, and tell me what you think of this device.

Would you have it in your home? I’d love to know. Alright. Talk to you soon.

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Voice in Canada Flash Briefing Icon1. Open your Alexa app and click on the Menu button > Settings > Flash Briefing.
2. Click on “Add Content” and search for “Voice in Canada”.
3. Click on “Voice in Canada” and the Enable button.

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