Report: Amazon Is Building a Home Robot Powered by Alexa

Amazon is reportedly working on a secretive home robot project, codenamed Vesta. The robot is already in the "late-prototype" design phase, but Amazon employees are allegedly concerned about marketability and production delays besetting the project.

Amazon Is Stepping Into Robotics

Amazon has pushed more than 800 employees into the Vesta robot project.

According to a report from Insider, Vesta is one of the biggest internal projects taken on by Amazon's Lab126, the same team that created popular tech such as the Amazon Echo smart speaker, the Kindle e-reader, and most notably, Alexa.

Insider spoke to six Amazon employees involved with the project, who gave information on the condition of anonymity—as you would expect for a company of this size and a project of this scope.

At this prototyping stage, Vesta is the size of "two small cats," or between roughly 10 to 13 inches wide. The final product will launch with multiple cameras, a touch input screen, a microphone, and the ability to move around your home on wheels, based upon your commands.

Two Amazon insiders familiar with the project called Vesta a "Fire Tablet mounted on wheels." Others likened it to a photo Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos shared on Instagram a couple of years ago, where his kids had taped a smart speaker to a robotic vacuum (it has nothing on Parks & Recreation's DJ Roomba, mind).

So, in short, Amazon is building Echo on wheels, a smart assistant designed to follow you around the home.

Amazon employees on the Vesta team are worried, though. Amazon has a recent history of developing products that never see the light of day. Then there was the ill-fated Amazon Fire phone back in 2014, which cost the company at least $170 million in product write down and sunk costs, without accounting for development and marketing.

People are very skeptical—we're worried it could turn into another Fire Phone

Who Wants Amazon Echo to Follow Them Around?

Many people are now comfortable with Amazon Echo devices and other smart assistants. But they largely sit in the corner of your kitchen or living room and respond when requested. They're very much a passive technology that's easy to use and unobtrusive to boot.

A robotic Amazon smart assistant that can make its way around your home is a different conversation. Do consumers really want more Amazon hardware in their homes? One that can move, map, and track everything that's going on?

The Amazon employees working on the project expressing concern could be right. The Insider report doesn't provide a hypothetical retail price, but Vesta is expected to cost significantly more than other Amazon smart home products.

Honestly, who needs it?