Amazon forms home-robot team around Fauna's Sprout humanoid

"I feel like we're just stuck with it, and we'll let it run around the house until it eventually dies, then send it to the trash heap." That is an Astro owner, quoted by CNBC on the $1,450 wheeled robot Amazon introduced in 2021 and that shipped to only a few thousand invite-only customers before, as CNBC puts it, the product never made it out of beta.

Five years later, Amazon is trying again. The company has stood up a Personal Robotics Group and is hiring for what its job posts call a "new-to-world robot product."

The seed is Fauna Robotics, which officially joined Amazon on March 24. Fauna makes Sprout, a 3.5-foot bipedal humanoid with expressive yellow eyebrows that has so far been used by researchers and academics. Much of the old Astro team was redeployed to the project, alongside staff from Lab126, the hardware lab behind Kindle and Echo, and an MIT roboticist brought in from outside.

"Amazon is committed to tackling the challenges that can unlock the personal robotics category," spokesperson Brad Glasser told CNBC.

What Amazon actually plans to build is not in the article. Design, pricing and release date are all undisclosed. Fauna's current Sprout sells as a $50,000 Creator Edition, several multiples above where Astro was priced.