Amazon’s working on a secret new home robot that could be more like Rosie
As a smart home reviewer of a certain age, all I’ve ever wanted for my home is a Rosie the Robot. The Jetsons’ mechanical housekeeper was the example I held Amazon’s Astro to when I tested the company’s first home robot — and it unsurprisingly failed. Not just because it had no arms, but because it couldn’t really do anything.
Now, according to internal documents from Amazon seen by Insider, the company thinks it has found the keys to unlock Astro’s potential. Burnham is a secret new AI robot project Amazon is developing that, according to the documents, adds a layer of “intelligence and a conversational spoken interface” to a smart home robot, reports Insider.
An upgraded Astro powered by Burnham could use large language models, and...