Will AMAZON be in every room of your house?
There are many companies working diligently on interesting Artificial Intelligence (AI) projects, ranging from medical imaging to autonomous vehicles and advanced robotics. We see AI as being a disruptive technology that will have long term and far reaching impacts, and the changes envisioned will be evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Machine learning is an iterative process, and each iteration takes time, as well as careful monitoring and tweaking by software engineers. Often these advances spawn ethical and moral questions, generating lots of lengthy discussion, as well as legislative and regulatory concerns that need to be sorted out. It is no wonder that AI projects are indeed evolutionary, and for the most part – unstoppable.
In the world of AI, one of the most poorly kept secrets is Amazon’s VESTA Project, which Amazon is not talking about, but lots of others are. VESTA is the kind of initiative that illustrates many facets of AI. The VESTA idea is to integrate smart robots into the AMAZON smart home environment, interacting with ECHO and ALEXA devices in your home. Interesting, and very cute, that VESTA is the Roman Goddess of hearth, home, and family. These domestic robots will be much different from their workhorse robots that automate AMAZON warehouses. VESTA is being developed by the Lab126 division, which is not part of the industrial robot division. VESTA may be able to integrate household chores, entertainment, information, and home systems management all within the AMAZON smart home systems environment.
It is anticipated that the Amazon VESTA robot will be mobile enough to guide itself to every room in your house, as needed or as commanded. The use of cameras and sensors would be similar to those used in autonomous vehicles. Other domestic robots have been tried, with the most successful to date being ROOMBA, which has a very limited scope of duties – vacuuming and parking. However, ROOMBA sales are impressive and the shopping public certainly likes the idea of machines taking on boring chores around the house. Other domestic robots, like SONY’S barking dog “AIBO” and the dancing “QRIO” have proven to be just expensive novelty items that did not conquer the domestic robot market. Success in the domestic robot market will depend on the machines having desirable features that are easy to use in an attractive package. Easy to say, but still a little elusive – for now.
There will be many challenges to these developments, as there is growing concern with technology infiltrating so many areas of our lives. Concerns range from invasion of privacy, loss of autonomy, protection of personal information, and a general fear and mistrust of technology that we do not fully understand. And of course there is the fear brought on by all those chilling, and perhaps silly, sci-fi movies with titles like “Revenge of the Killer Robots”.
Trend Disruptors is watching this sector closely, as we perceive great profit potential when these AI devices come to market and succeed. There are many technology companies that could play a pivotal role in providing specific expertise and/or specialized products to make domestic robots a huge success – and a welcome addition to our homes.
Stay tuned!