Jamie Siminoff's Ring launches a $249.99 home drone and $999.99 robot

Amazon's Ring on Tuesday launched Ring Robotics, a new line of autonomous security devices led by a $249.99 indoor drone that flies through a home on its own and a $999.99 rolling robot built to patrol stores and offices, GeekWire reported.

The launch is a second attempt at two ideas that stalled. Ring first showed a flying indoor camera, the Always Home Cam, in 2020 at the same $249.99 price, but it never went on general sale. Amazon's rolling Astro for Business robot launched in November 2023 at a starting price of $2,350 and was discontinued less than a year later, with customers refunded and the robots shut off. The new Rover costs less than half what Astro for Business did.

For founder Jamie Siminoff, the products are a test of whether Ring can move from cameras on walls to machines that roam. Siminoff, who started Ring's predecessor, Doorbot, in 2012 and sold Ring to Amazon in 2018, left in 2023 and returned last year to lead Ring and Amazon's related home security businesses. Reinventing the security device, he said in a statement, meant accepting that "that kind of invention is hard, and it takes time."

The Drone Cam is meant to replace several fixed cameras. It sits in a dock with its camera shuttered until it is sent out on a schedule, on demand, or automatically when another Ring device is triggered by motion, an open door, a water leak or an alarm, The Verge reported after a hands-on demo in New York. It records 2K video with a 148-degree field of view, weighs 165 grams and carries LED spotlights for the dark.

Its limits are real. Ring says the drone can fly for five to eight minutes on a charge, and each minute in the air takes eight minutes of charging, so a five-minute flight needs about 40 minutes on the dock. That points to quick check-ins rather than continuous watch. The drone also leans on the cloud for its intelligence. Without Wi-Fi, The Verge noted, all it can do is land.

Siminoff told The Verge that Ring has been developing a drone since 2016 and came close to shipping two earlier models before scrapping them about a year ago to build a simpler craft that offloads its brains to the cloud. Both new devices run on a system Ring calls AI Pilot, which combines cameras, vision models, sensors and cloud processing to map a space and plan routes around obstacles. "Truly, it’s like an AI agent that’s controlling the robot," Siminoff said.

The Rover Cam is aimed at businesses. Built on Amazon's Astro home robot, it streams continuous 4K video through a periscope camera that can rise to see over counters and shelving, and it has two-way audio so a remote owner can talk to whoever is in the store, TechCrunch reported. Battery life is about 30 minutes, enough for facilities of around 5,000 square feet on a single floor, according to The Verge. It competes with security-robot makers such as Knightscope and Cobalt AI, GeekWire said.

Dates and fine print matter here. The Rover is available for preorder in the U.S. now and is scheduled to ship Dec. 16. The Drone Cam is slated for Jan. 27, 2027, but Ring is only taking email sign-ups because the drone has not yet received the required authorization from the Federal Communications Commission. Siminoff told The Verge the drone complies with FCC rules and is assembled in the U.S. Scheduled flights and patrols require a Ring Protect subscription.

Privacy will follow the products to market. Critics have long argued that Ring's cameras form informal surveillance networks that police can tap, TechCrunch noted. Ring says footage from both devices is protected by its new TAKE encryption, short for Throw Away the Key Encryption, which The Verge said rotates keys every five minutes and deletes Ring's copies after 24 hours.

The launch extends Amazon's push into robotics and commercial security. Ring unveiled a $5,000 surveillance trailer for parking lots in January, and Amazon bought New York humanoid robot startup Fauna Robotics in March, GeekWire reported. The broader company is already under scrutiny elsewhere, including a Federal Trade Commission case over its ad prices. The next test comes Dec. 16, when the first Rovers ship. More from the Tech Sector.