Amazon has an idea for a fleet of robots that can charge your phone and sell you things
First Amazon dealt a blow to book stores. Then brick and mortar retail outlets. It's coming after network television, Thursday night football and even Netflix. Grocery stores and Blue Apron better watch out, and it's one-upping Pinterest and Instagram with the mobile app's new Spark feature.
Recently, Amazon's innovations have veered in the direction of creepy. The Echo Show, an Alexa-enabled device that allows two-way video chats through its "drop in" feature, began shipping last month. The Echo Look, which has an embedded camera to photograph your outfits, is available by invitation only.
What other devices has Amazon thought about bringing to life? Say hello to airport robots.
According to a A U.S. patent filed by Amazon in 2015 that was published Wednesday, Amazon thought about building an army of robots that would follow you at the airport, charge your phone and try to sell you things, GeekWire reports.
"The newly published patent," according to GeekWire, "lays out a detailed system for a fleet of robots that can be summoned in an airport, shopping mall or other public places."
When, say, you need to charge your smartphone, you can make a request for a robot to come to your location using sensor data, according to career site Ladders. Or the robot can come find you, using an app to automatically recognize when your cell phone power has fallen below 10 percent.
Amazon was considering having users pay for the charge by "viewing an advertisement," "participating in a survey," or "browsing for an item and/or conducting a purchase of the item from an electronic marketplace," according to the patent.
As long as the robots aren't flying the plane — yet.
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