Amazon's Ring unveiled the $250 Ring Drone Cam, an indoor flying security camera, and the $1,000 Ring Rover Cam, a patrolling business robot, as the company extends its surveillance hardware lineup beyond fixed cameras.
Amazon's Ring on Tuesday announced two autonomous security devices — an indoor flying drone for home monitoring and a wheeled patrol robot aimed at commercial workplaces — pushing further into the surveillance hardware market as competition in the smart home sector intensifies.
The $250 Ring Drone Cam is a textbook-sized camera that flies from room to room, including between floors, and can capture footage during daylight or at night. When a window, door, or home security sensor triggers an alarm, the drone travels a preset path to investigate. Users may also deploy it manually at any time, the company said.
Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff, speaking at a demo in New York on Monday, described the device as both a monitoring tool and a crime deterrent, citing its built-in LED lights. "If someone is going around your house at night, and your motion detector goes off on your Ring doorbell, imagine if you see spotlights and something flying across the window," Siminoff said. "You're probably not going to go into that house."
The drone flies up to eight minutes per charge before returning autonomously to its docking station. Its two propellers are enclosed in plastic casing and emit a loud buzz while airborne.
Ring also introduced the $1,000 Ring Rover Cam, a repurposed version of Amazon's Astro home robot — first unveiled in 2021 — redesigned for deployment in offices, warehouses, and other workspaces. The device consists of a display mounted on a two-wheeled base with an extendable periscope camera. It also includes a built-in siren, two-way audio, and a light tower that projects onto the ceiling to indicate its position. Ring described the Rover Cam as a "purpose-built security robot."
Siminoff said in an interview that both devices are intended to let users monitor multiple areas with a single unit. "People like indoor cameras, but they don't necessarily want them everywhere around their home," he said.
Ring said privacy is the "default" mode for both products, with an LED light that activates whenever either device is recording.
The drone has roots going back several years — Ring first previewed it in 2020 under the name the Always Home Cam. Siminoff said he delayed its release to allow time to refine the design, sensors, and data processing.
The Ring Drone Cam is scheduled to ship in the United States on January 27, pending approval from the Federal Communications Commission. The Ring Rover Cam is set to begin shipping on December 16, the company said.
FAA regulations prohibit operating drones outside of a pilot's direct line of sight, limiting the drone to indoor use. Siminoff said Ring has instructed customers not to fly the device outdoors and has added technical guardrails to prevent it from leaving an interior space.
Ring, which Amazon acquired in 2018, built its reputation on video doorbells but has carried persistent privacy scrutiny, particularly around its partnerships with law enforcement. Earlier this year, the company faced criticism over a Super Bowl advertisement promoting an AI-powered pet-finding tool called "Search Party," and subsequently canceled a planned integration with police technology provider Flock Safety.
The smart home market Ring operates in is large and growing — Grand View Research estimates it will surpass $200 billion in sales this year, a space where Amazon competes directly with Apple and Google.
With the Rover Cam breathing new commercial life into the largely dormant Astro platform, and the Drone Cam finally reaching consumers after a six-year development cycle, Ring is signaling that autonomous, mobile security hardware — not just fixed cameras — is central to its next chapter.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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