US chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices said on Friday it will invest around $400 million in India over the next five years and will build its largest design center in the tech hub of Bengaluru. AMD’s announcement was made by its Chief Technology Officer Mark Papermaster at an annual semiconductor conference that started Friday in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Other speakers at the flagship event include Foxconn Chairman Young Liu and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra. Despite being a late entrant, the Modi government has been courting investments into India’s nascent chip sector to establish its credentials as a chipmaking hub. AMD said it will open its new design centre campus in Bengaluru by end of this year and create 3,000 new engineering roles within five years. “Our India teams will continue to play a pivotal role in delivering the high-performance and adaptive solutions that support AMD customers worldwide,” Papermaster said. The new 500,000-square-foot (55,5...
Amazon Astro, the home bot will mimic your move, but there’s a caveat
Amazon Astro, the new autonomous household robot took the audience by surprise on Tuesday at Amazon’s product launch event. The new Alexa-powered bot has been launched at an introductory invite-only price of $999.99 (around Rs 74,190), but unfortunately, this ‘canine-like’ robot is limited to the US market only.
Amazon Astro Alexa-based home bot makes grand debut at Amazon Product event
The home robot with a screen on wheels can take up several tasks like setting up routines, reminders, and ‘can autonomously patrol the home and respond to voice commands.’ The bot has a 1080p periscope camera with a 132-degree FoV and can travel about a meter per second. The device even has a 5-megapixel bezel camera that helps to navigate and ‘map its environment.’
This tiny robot has pair of circles in a 10-inch HD touchscreen display to imitate eyes and even bears a cargo bin liner and a cup holder.
As reported by Bloomberg, Dave Limp, Amazon’s devices, and services chief says, “Customers don’t just want Alexa on wheels. We’ve embodied it with a unique persona that’s all it’s own.”
He further mentions that the robot is part of the Amazon program that makes devices still under development available.
To use this new Astro bot, users will require an active Amazon account and a compatible device with iOS 13 or above, or Android 8 or above, and the Astro app (of course). The bot designed to learn human habits uses Intelligent Motion to navigate a room and avoid objects like furniture and pets.
It can make calls, follow you around, and play music or podcasts on the go. It can be used for surveillance as well as Astro integrates with Ring’s security alarm system, capture footage, and send it to Ring’s cloud. One can even set boundaries as to where the bot can/cannot move around via the Astro app’s ‘out-of-bounds zones.’ But while all these sound fun and exciting, as we mentioned before, the Disney EVA-like (mention from Wall-E) robot is available only in the 50 US States. Amazon’s new homey-bot comes for a regular price of $1,449.99 (around Rs 1.07 lakhs).
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