The firm may be developing autonomous machines to help out around the house—think of them as Alexa on the move.

The news:  Bloomberg says an Amazon project called Vesta is “an ambitious, top-secret plan to build a domestic robot.” The work is being carried out at Lab 126, the same in-house research team that developed the company’s Echo speakers. It has recently been trying to hire more robotics engineers.

Details: Per Bloomberg,“prototypes of the robots have advanced cameras and computer vision software and can navigate through homes like a self-driving car.” The firm reportedly has plans to put the machines inside the homes of staff before the end of this year. 

Why it matters: Domestic robots are a vision of the future, but so far they have been unsuccessful. There’s huge money to be made by the firm that nails the technology. Amazon will hope it can use its existing smart-home dominance to take a lead.