Amazon's Astro home robot has fans but looks destined for the 'trash heap.' Why it's trying again

Jeff Bezos made a bold bet in 2017. A sci-fi and robotics enthusiast, Bezos was convinced that consumers would have a robot in their home in the not-too-distant future.The Amazon founder and then-CEO told a group of the company's top device executives to get to work on building one, and within a few years, the team came up with the $1,450 Astro.The public got its first look at Astro, essentially an Alexa-equipped tablet on wheels that can autonomously navigate a home, recognize faces and act as a roving security monitor, when it rolled on stage at Amazon's fall 2021 event.But it never evolved beyond an invite-only product. Astro shipped to just a few thousand customers, some of whom now believe the robot's days are numbered. The company also released an Astro for businesses in 2023, before sunsetting it less than a year later.Amazon isn't giving up on Bezos' dream of a household robot just yet, despite its stumbles with Astro.Over the past several months, the company has assembled a new team that's working on a "new-to-world robot product," according to a CNBC analysis of job posts."Robots are about to step out of the movies and into our homes," a recent job listing for an engineer...