Amazon is releasing two autonomous home security devices under a new Ring Robotics lineup, the Ring Drone Cam and the Ring Rover Cam. The Drone Cam will sell for $249.99 and ship on January 27, 2027. Ring founder Jamie Siminoff said the company has worked on a drone concept since 2016, before Amazon acquired Ring in 2018.
The Drone Cam weighs 165 grams and is a small quadcopter with a 2K camera and two LEDs on its front and a 1080p camera underneath, plus a bottom LED for illumination. Ring executives said the moving lights can resemble a security guard sweeping a flashlight through a dark home. The device can fly on preset schedules, launch in response to a motion or leak sensor, or be started manually. Flights can be directed through the Alexa Home Map Amazon announced last month, which renders a 3D view of a house so a user can tap a destination and let the drone plot its own route.
Amazon said flight time runs about eight to 10 minutes depending on altitude, since higher paths force the propellers to work harder. When power or Wi-Fi runs low, the Drone Cam lands or returns to its dock, where eight minutes of charging provides enough power for one minute of flight. Siminoff said earlier versions were held back because they did not work well enough, and that adding sensors and compute drove up weight, power needs, battery size and safety shrouds until a consumer device could have cost more than $5,000. He attributed the lower weight and price to cloud processing and what Ring calls an AI Pilot, which maps a space, suggests patrol points and navigates around obstacles.
The Rover Cam resembles Amazon's Astro robot and is aimed at enterprise uses such as warehouse monitoring and patrols for small to medium businesses. It carries a 4K camera that can extend up to 4 feet on a periscope and spin 360 degrees, a built-in siren, a speaker and microphone, and a light tower that projects a blue ring and flashes red during an alarm. It can stream and record while traveling to a location and continuously watches for person motion while docked. Ring said the Rover Cam was inspired by feedback from Astro customers who valued roving security, and its software releases with the device on December 16.
Ring said both devices power down their cameras in the dock and record only when a flight is triggered, with video protected by TAKE, its strongest default encryption. The company also said the devices are designed to be seen and heard, positioning visible lights, sirens and the drone's noisy propellers as deterrents rather than only monitoring tools.
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