In an acknowledgement that cracking the house robotics market is difficult, Amazon is bringing its Astro robotic to a decidedly extra company viewers.
The corporate at present introduced Astro for Enterprise, which repurposes Astro as a security robotic for small- and medium-sized enterprise clients. Astro for Enterprise provides a number of new capabilities to Astro, together with the flexibility to create a number of security monitoring routes and ship alerts when the robotic hears the sounds of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms or glass breaking.
“[T]raditional security options will be too static or costly for what companies want. We predict Astro for Enterprise will help with that,” Anthony Robson, head of product for Amazon Astro, stated in a canned assertion.
Astro for Enterprise isn’t precisely low-cost, although, beginning at $2,349.99 — particularly contemplating getting the total worth out of the service requires subscribing to further plans.
To save lots of video historical past and sync Astro with Ring alarms and movement detectors, Astro for Enterprise clients need to pay $20 per 30 days for Ring Shield Professional. Astro’s patrolling and alerting options, known as Astro Safe, aren’t free of charge — they’re $60 per 30 days on their very own. Human agent help and monitoring is $99 per 30 days, and requires subscriptions to Ring Shield Professional and Astro Safe.
Astro for Enterprise — which is simply obtainable within the U.S. at launch — does embody a four-month trial of Ring Shield Professional and Astro Safe, however the prices will definitely add up.
Priced as excessive as it’s, Astro for Enterprise appears to be an try and extract what worth Amazon can out of Astro, which was conspicuously absent from the corporate’s annual units and companies showcase this yr. Amazon’s VP of client robotics, Ken Washington, just lately departed, and Astro stays an invite-only product roughly two years after its unveiling.
“Even Amazon can’t fairly determine what Astro is for,” my colleague Haje wrote in an op-ed. Certainly.
