Amazon, who only as recently as 4 years ago introduced the world to their Amazon Echo smart speaker, are rumoured to be developing a robot for the home.
Codenamed “Vesta,” after the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, the project is overseen by the Amazon’s Lab126 hardware research division, currently there are listings on their job page for “Software Engineer, Robotics” and “Principle Sensors Engineer” helping to fuel speculation.
According to insider the Vesta project originated a few years ago, Jeff Bezos hosts the invitation only MARS conference every year which is entirely dedicated to machine learning, home automation, robotics and space exploration.
Amazon have a clear advantage here, they already have a division called Amazon Robotics which designs, builds and deploys robots to run their Amazon Warehouses which is a originated as a company called Kiva Systems that they bought back in 2012 for $775 million.
Robots in the home have been the holy grail of technology with a long line of famous technology companies trying their hand at bringing them to the masses, Nolan Bushel founder of Atari is shown here with his Topo Bot which could be programmed by Apple II. Could Amazon be the company to bring Robots mainstream for the very first time?