Here’s a look at what’s next for Amazon Astro, from AI learning to small business security

Last year Amazon introduced Astro, a new kind of robot designed to give you convenience when you’re home.  Now the company is bringing Astro and Virtual Security Guard together to offer SMBs a new way to protect businesses.  Imagine you have Virtual Security Guard at your business and head home for the night, arming your Ring Alarm. If the Alarm goes off, Astro will autonomously and proactively go investigate what happened, while professional monitoring agents use Astro’s cameras to observe what’s happening in real-time. If something is wrong, agents can take appropriate action, like calling dispatch to send the right authorities, or warning off an intruder through two-way talk.

Amazon will begin rolling this out to a small of business customers in the coming months.

While Amazon expands Astro’s abilities to small and medium-sized businesses, the company also added a new pet detection feature for families with pets.  With this new pet detection feature, Astro will help you keep an eye on your pet, whether you are on the move or just in another part of the house. While on patrol, if Astro does see your pet, it will send you a short video clip of what they’re doing, so you can decide if you want to start a Live View to say hi to them, or simply enjoy watching what they’re up to while you’re away. For example, you can use Live View to tell your dog to get off the couch, or you can take a picture of what they’re doing to add to your pet scrapbook.

Also, Amazon is now introducing a new multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) capability that gives Astro the ability to learn from you about things in your home that you want it to learn about.  With this capability, Astro will be able to learn what something is through two modalities: by looking at the object in question, while listening to you describe it.  Astro can learn things like which door is the front door, which window is the kitchen window, and their location and current state—like whether it’s open or closed. While patrolling, Astro will be able to proactively alert you if it sees a door or window is in the wrong state, such as if the bathroom door leading to your cat’s litter box was mistakenly closed.  Astro does this by sending you a picture from its camera, and you’ll also see text stating which door or window is open. You can also ask Astro to go check on a specific door or window, in which case Astro will go take a picture. Astro will then either return to you with a message telling you about the state of the door or window, or send you an alert through the Astro app.  This new feature utilizes advancements in multimodal AI understanding, and was developed in partnership with our colleagues in the Alexa AI team.