New CES 2023 Amazon camera patrols your home like RoboCop


amazon ring always home cam patrols like robocop the done on a table

We're all used to seeing Amazon Ring camera videos of delivery drivers slinging packages onto porches and over fences, but Amazon's latest camera makes a huge leap from simply monitoring the front door to actively patrolling your home if it detects an intruder.

The Always Home Cam was first seen in 2021, but it's been radio silence from then until its official reveal at CES 2023. It is a drone with four rotors and a camera that sits on a charging dock somewhere in your house and can be programmed to launch, follow a pre-programmed path, and then land again all by itself if its alarm is triggered.

Owners can display a live feed from the Always Home Cam's 1440p camera on any of their smart devices to see what's happening around their house, or you can just check the videos back later. And with a 120 degree field of view, it puts the wide in wide angle, capturing in an almost semi circle radius around its lens.

There are limitations to what the Always Home Cam can do, however. The drone-camera will be able to remember numerous flight paths around your house, but it can only fly one at a time and has to return to its dock between each new route. It also won't be able to navigate stairs, so you'll have to dock it on the floor you want to keep an eye on.

In an interview with The Verge, the product's founder Jamie Siminoff said that we won't see widespread availability of the camera until 2024 but that it will retail for an affordable $249.99. So, it won't be long before we all have our personal RoboCop (sans genital-shooting pistol) patrolling our homes soon.

Who exactly the Always Home Cam will protect, though, is still to be seen after the company has been the subject of numerous controversies. The BBC found that each doorbell press and each motion it captures was actually stored by Ring. Wired has also reported on the deals the company has cut with police departments to expand suburban surveillance.

That's not a good look when you're asking consumers to let their latest invention scour the layout of your home.

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