Just four years after kicking off the smart speaker craze with the Echo, Amazon is reportedly building robots for the home as its next major venture. According to Bloomberg, the top-secret project — codenamed “Vesta” internally after the Roman goddess of the hearth — is being developed by the Lab126 hardware R&D division in California. Lab126 is the same division that produced the Echo, Fire TV set-top boxes and even the Fire Phone.
While sources claim that the project was initiated years ago, Amazon began ramping up hiring this year, with dozens of job listings appearing on the Lab126 website in recent weeks. If everything goes accordingly, Amazon could start sending robots home with employees by the end of 2018, with the possibility of a public launch in 2019.
