Amazon has just acquired Fauna Robotics, a two-year-old startup that has built a very cool humanoid robot called Sprout. The robot, which was just announced at the end of January, is autonomous out of the box and is capable of navigating around the room, detecting humans, using its hands to interact with the environment, and interacting with people via conversations and dynamic expressions.
While not much information is available about the deal, TechCrunch reports that Fauna’s employees and its two founders will join Amazon in its New York City office.
The e-commerce giant is really investing heavily in robotics lately. Just last week, Neowin covered the news that Amazon had acquired a Swiss firm called Rivr, which specializes in doorstep delivery technology and has already created a bot that has four legs on wheels and helps delivery drivers drop off parcels to front doors.
In a statement about the Fauna Robotics acquisition, Amazon said:
We are excited about Fauna’s vision to build capable, safe, and fun robots for everyone. Together with Amazon’s robotics expertise and decades of experience earning customer trust in the home through our retail and devices businesses, we’re looking forward to inventing new ways to make our customers’ lives better and easier.
While Amazon has not stated what it plans to use Fauna Robotics’ expertise for, what we do know is that Sprout costs around $50,000 if you were to buy it, according to reports. This is in line with what we have heard before that buying a robot will be similar to buying a car, with it being paid off in monthly installments in most cases. This price point would also make it highly attractive to businesses.
While the 2020s have seen some good advancements in robotics and the AI to power them, we shouldn’t expect to see mainstream adoption of robots like Sprout for around another decade, when the technology has matured further, and costs have come down.
Source: Bloomberg (paywall) via TechCrunch