Amazon originally intended to reveal the robot, known internally as “Vesta,” as early as this year, but the machine isn’t ready to be mass-produced, the people said. While Amazon could choose never to release the robot, in recent months it has pulled engineers from other projects to work on it , Maybe a signal the company plans to sell Vesta at some point.
It’s unclear what tasks the Amazon robot might perform. People familiar with the project speculated last year that the Vesta could be a sort of mobile Alexa, accompanying customers in parts of their home where they don’t have Echo devices.
New echo
The company plans to release the new Echo by next year, according to people familiar with the product. Prototypes of the cylindrical speaker are wider than the current Echo to squeeze in additional components including at least four tweeters