The Astro, new from Amazon.
Amazon imagines the corgi-esque robot that follows you around the house, locates things for you with a semi-obscene periscope, and supports video chats with its touchscreen. Astro has facial popularity on board to be able to recognize its owners. It also has a navigation formula that allows you to map your home and avoid constant, moving objects, such as a robot vacuum cleaner.
Do you want a robot dog with a screen that follows you everywhere?Of course not! I’m not even sure this will do anything useful, least of all if necessary.
That’s great? It’s a creepy robot dog, of course it’s great. Look, you can blame Amazon for its mistreatment of workers, its anti-unionism, the fatal strain it puts on delivery drivers, the devastation it has inflicted on small retailers. Be skeptical about the privacy implications of having a cell phone surveillance corgi flashing around your home collecting God knows what kind of information.
But honestly, can you look at this thing in his WALL-E eyes and tell me it’s not adorable?No, you can’t. It’s spectacular and fiercely cute, it’s not cute at $1,500 at all. That’s too much to spend for a robot dog with much less ease of use than a genuine dog. If you have that kind of cash to spend on something like this, donate it to the Church of Scientology or anything more worthy.
But let’s say you buy one, or a generous friend with a bad sense of humor gives you one, let’s say you’re now a proud owner of Astro, well, now you want to answer one of the ultimate queries, a query that annoys adult dog owners since wolves were first domesticated: