Amazon’s Vesta no-show highlights the challenges of home robots

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At a press event in downtown Seattle, some expected Amazon to preview a home robot that’s reportedly like a roving Echo Show, replete with wheels, microphones, and a display.
But the announcement never came, and Amazon’s reticence might speak to the many challenges inherent to home robots — and indeed, robots at large.
Amazon’s robot — code-named Vesta, after the Roman goddess of the hearth — apparently packs far-field microphones and speakers that enable it to understand and respond to the thousands of commands Alexa recognizes.
It’s said to be able to navigate through homes using computer vision and techniques like simultaneous localization and mapping, and select Amazon employees are reportedly piloting it ahead of a launch as soon as this year.
Anki’s demise followed that of Bosch-backed startup Mayfield Robotics, which was developing a larger, pricier ($700) home robot dubbed Kuri.
Temi, a startup headquartered in New York that’s developing a $1,500 telepresence robot with voice assistant integration, recently raised $21 million, in part from former Alibaba chief technology officer John Wu. Separately, wellness robots like Mabu and Diligent Robotics’ Moxi have found their way into hospitals, homes, and nursing centers, where they’re doubling as orderlies and symptom trackers for chronically ill patients.
“Every home is different — people interact with robots differently.
Amazon’s home robot will have to overcome formidable barriers to success, chief among them a lack of emotional intelligence and customers’ sky-high expectations.
“We explored putting third-party interfaces into robots and found that having to say a hotword [like ‘Alexa’ or ‘hey, Google’] felt awkward and mechanical,” Anki’s Mark Palatucci told VentureBeat in a previous interview.
Amazon’s robot would do well to follow their leads, perhaps with expressions, animations, or sound — and with music and activity recommendations tailored to users’ habits and sentiment

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