When you see a flight of stairs. | Photo by Dan Seifert / The Verge
Some of the people building Amazon’s Astro home robot are not impressed with it, according to a report by Vice. One person who worked on the robot, which was announced today, reportedly called it a “disaster that’s not ready for release,” while another said it was “terrible,” and the idea that it’d be a useful accessibility device (part of Amazon’s pitch is that Astro can help with elder care) was “absurdist nonsense.” The sources also mentioned that the bot doesn’t handle stairs well, with one even saying that it would “throw itself down” them “if presented the opportunity.”
To make matters worse, Vice also reports that the robot is fragile and that several devices had broken. That’s not great news for a $1,000 (or $1,449) robot that…
