\n<\/p>\n
In an acknowledgement that cracking the home robotics market is hard, Amazon is bringing its Astro robot to a decidedly more corporate audience.<\/p>\n
The company today announced<\/a> Astro for Business, which repurposes Astro as a security robot for small- and medium-sized business customers. Astro for Business adds several new capabilities to Astro, including the ability to create multiple security monitoring routes and send alerts when the robot hears the sounds of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms or glass breaking.<\/p>\n \u201c[T]raditional security solutions can be too static or expensive for what businesses need. We think Astro for Business can help with that,\u201d Anthony Robson, head of product for Amazon Astro, said in a canned statement.<\/p>\n Astro for Business isn\u2019t exactly cheap, though, starting at $2,349.99 \u2014 especially considering getting the full value out of the service requires subscribing to additional plans.<\/p>\n To save video history and sync Astro with Ring alarms and motion detectors, Astro for Business customers have to pay $20 per month for Ring Protect Pro. Astro\u2019s patrolling and alerting features, called Astro Secure, aren\u2019t gratis \u2014 they\u2019re $60 per month on their own. Human agent support and monitoring is $99 per month, and requires subscriptions to Ring Protect Pro and Astro Secure.<\/p>\n Now, Astro for Business \u2014 which is only available in the U.S. at launch \u2014 does include a four-month trial of Ring Protect Pro and Astro Secure. But the costs will certainly add up.<\/p>\n Priced as high as it is, Astro for Business seems to be an attempt to extract what value Amazon can out of Astro, which was conspicuously absent from the company\u2019s annual devices and services showcase this year. Amazon\u2019s VP of consumer robotics, Ken Washington, recently departed, and Astro remains an invite-only product roughly two years<\/a> after its unveiling.<\/p>\n \u201cEven Amazon can\u2019t quite figure out what Astro is for,\u201d my colleague Haje wrote<\/a> in an op-ed last May. Indeed.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n