Bezos, who led the 45,000 robot army, bet on the family robot, trying to expand more scenes.

The Kindle succeeded, and Echo succeeded. Now, Bezos, who leads the 45,000 robot army, is betting on the family robot, trying to expand more scenes. However, once Amazon's move is successful, I am afraid that Echo's life will be compromised. Moreover, there are many family robots, and Bezos's winning geometry?

Ten years ago, Amazon launched the Kindle, which changed the way people read books and established the appeal of reading on digital devices. Four years ago, Amazon launched Echo, and millions of people started talking to smart speakers.

Now, Bezos has launched another big gamble: home robots.

According to people familiar with the matter, the retail and cloud computing giants have begun an ambitious top-secret plan to build home robots.

The project, code-named "Vesta" (Vesta), is taken from the goddess of Roman mythology in charge of stoves, fires and families. Project Vesta is headed by Gregg Zehr, head of Lab 126 hardware development. Lab126 is a secret lab founded in 2004, from which Kindle readers, Echo speakers, Fire TV set-top boxes, Fire tablets, and the unfortunate Fire Phone were born.

The Vesta project started a few years ago, but this year Amazon is making a big move for this project. Lab 126's official website has a number of new "software engineers, robotics", "sensor engineers" and other positions.

According to informed sources, Amazon hopes to test family robots in the employees' homes at the end of this year, and may cooperate with consumers as early as 2019. However, the timetable may change, and Amazon's hardware projects sometimes abort.

It's unclear what tasks Amazon's robots can perform. Informed sources speculate that the Vesta robot may be an Alexa-based mobile device that can accompany users in places where there are no Echo devices in the home. The prototype of the robot has an advanced camera and computer vision software that can be navigated at home like an unmanned vehicle. Former Apple executive Max Paley currently leads Amazon's work in computer vision. Amazon also hired a professional mechanical engineer in the robotics industry.

Amazon Vesta robots or 5 smart, meet consumers in 2019

Although the source did not disclose the details of the appearance or function of the Amazon family robot, in recent years Amazon has made some large investments in artificial intelligence. If these AI tools are used in Project Vesta, we can predict that Amazon's robots will have What features and machine intelligence.

At the end of 2017, Alexa's chief scientist Rohit Prasad talked about how Amazon analyzes the user's emotional state based on the voice recordings that users collect each time they communicate with Alexa-supported devices. Amazon started by recognizing "frustration" to let Alexa know if it successfully completed a task. Later this analysis extended to other emotional types.

Today, you can say "I feel sad" to Alexa, and then you will get an automatic reply. In the future, Alexa will be able to identify the nuances of your voice and the usual voice, thus improving Alexa's user experience.

For robots, this knowledge can be expressed in terms of mood or gestures, movements, expressions, and so on.

For example, Alexa in your car or in your bedroom may be aware of signs of stress or anxiety in your voice. In response, when your Amazon robot sees you, its face will show more enthusiasm or comfort. Expression. Depending on your behavior, these signals can be used by the robot to recommend a particular type of music or other activity.

This intelligence is important not only because it can be used for advertising or for a personalized experience, but because understanding how to communicate with humans will help the robot transform interaction from simple imperatives into more natural communication.

Amazon robots are very likely to have the ability to recognize user faces and deploy all of Amazon Cloud Cam's services. Cloud Cam, released last fall, is able to send alerts to users' mobile phones using motion detection and face recognition. AWS also released real-time face recognition technology at the AWS Re:invent conference last year.

Amazon Cloud Cam

Face recognition can also be used to take photos or videos from around the house, just like Google's Clips camera, which allows you to set specific members.

In addition, Amazon's robots can also use computer vision to help users shop. Echo Look, released last year by Amazon, uses computer vision to identify clothes and recommend clothing for users.

Coupled with Amazon's visual search technology DeepLens, robots can do more.

Amazon's new robots can work with Amazon's various delivery services, whether it's drone delivery or the Amazon Key, a home delivery service launched last year.

A robot that knows how to effectively interact with humans and enhance human capabilities can be a "compensating for missing partners." Amazon's robots can be given the intelligence to not only do their jobs efficiently, but also to overcome the challenges that machines face when dealing with people.

In the short term, this may mean that Amazon's robots can chat with people and perhaps reduce human loneliness.

What's even cooler is that once these robots are available, the user can choose the personality of the robot.

Bezos has a 45,000 robotic army and is expected to surpass human employees in the warehouse center in 2019.

Bezos may have an inexplicable preference for robots.

According to the Seattle Times, at Amazon, the number of robots used in 2016 was 30,000, which increased to 45,000 in 2017, which is more than the armed forces of the NATO member states.

The 45,000 robots are distributed primarily in Amazon's 20 Fulfillment warehousing service centers, including the orange Kiva robot and the yellow robotic arm.

BusinessInside has forwarded a map that is expected to exceed the number of robots in the Fulfillment warehousing service center for the first time in 2019.

However, the robotic army of Bezos is not affiliated with Lab126. They are products of Amazon RoboTIcs and belong to industrial robots.

Amazon Robotics acquired the Kiva System for $775 million in 2012. According to official announcements, Kiva is able to carry about 1,000 pounds of cargo and can "charge for 5 minutes, work for an hour", now the Amazon Storage Center Main force.

Kiva Industrial Robot

In addition, Amazon was exposed in 2016 to submit a patent for a large drone, which Amazon called Amazon's "Fulfillment Center."

Aerial Fulfillment Center

The "Air Fulfillment Center" hovered at a height of approximately 45,000 feet in the air, and the user moved as needed, both in stock and in time when needed.

Amazon's self-revolution: the competition in the speaker market is too fierce, and there are homes with robots.

In the United States, smart speakers Echo and Alexa assistants dominate the market, accounting for 73% of the market. Echo, which came out four years ago, led the explosion of AI speakers worldwide.

But the popularity of AI speakers has also made Echo face countless opponents. Apple's HomePod, Google Home and its acquisition of Nest are all challenging Amazon's position.

The threshold of smart speaker technology is not high. Once the opponents are more perfect in interaction and content output, Amazon's relative comparative advantage will be lost.

As a result, the home robot became the road to Bezos. And once successful, it means the life of Echo.

In fact, Bezos’s gamble is not so easy to win.

For decades, home robots have been able to provide companionship or basic housework, which has made the industry very attractive, and countless people have gone on and on, but no one has successfully entered the home market.

In 1983, Atari's founder, Nolan Bushnel, launched a 3-foot-high, snowman-shaped Topo robot controlled by an Apple II computer. It was the earliest home robot, but it had few other features and sales were terrible.

Now, Japan and China have emerged a large number of robot companies in the past few years. The Japan Robotstart Association released a relatively complete map of the Japanese robot industry last year. It shows that there are many players in this industry, but there has never been an absolute leader.

In the context of the "Hundreds of Wars", the entry of giants like Amazon may be a bad sign for practitioners, especially startups.

Not only that, Sony and LG Electronics have also become interested in this industry. At the CES show in January this year, LG showed a robot called Cloi. Sony has shown a new version of the robot dog called Aibo, but it doesn't do much except to call it.

Aibo robot dog

Advances in computer vision and voice technology have given Amazon the opportunity to bring home robots to the market, but we will wait and see if we can enter the home.

Bifacial Double Glass Module

Our solar module has high reliability. Minimized micro-cracks with innovative non-destructive cutting technology. Ensured PID resistance through cell process and module material control.

Bifacial Double Glass Module,Silicon Solar Module,Silicon Mono Solar Module,Monocrystalline Silicon Solar Module

Jiangxi Huayang New Energy Co.,Ltd , https://www.huayangenergy.com