What do you get when you mix Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant with an Echo Show tablet, give it a hefty dose of artificial intelligence, integrate it all with Ring’s home security system, and let it roll around your home autonomously? Oh ya and Pepper (see what I did there) it with a little Jetson’s naming … and you get ASTRO.

Astro – Amazon’s long-rumored home robot. The company has been working on this for nearly four years, and it has plans for Astro. It’s just not quite sure exactly what those are yet, so it’s offering the robot by invitation only, hoping thousands of early customers can help define what it’s for. The 2-foot-tall, 20-pound robot has a 10-inch touchscreen; includes an array of sensors, cameras, and microphones; and can wheel, multi-directionally, around your home. It costs $1,000.

You’re saying … but why, do we need another invention from Amazon like that flying drone home monitoring thing from last year’s CES? Because Amazon has the money to work on and release products of this caliber to the market, simply to test. Not many others can say that. Will it work – who knows? Do we need it – probably not? Are there security issues – most likely? But at the end of the day, it’s a cool #innovation and I love innovation. #wakeupimagine