Amazon’s Ring has unveiled a flying security camera that patrols the inside of a home on its own, six years after it first showed a drone that never went on sale. The Ring Drone Cam costs $249.99 and is due to ship to customers in the United States on 27 January 2027, Amazon said in its official announcement on 10 November.
Alongside it, Ring revealed the Rover Cam, a $999.99 wheeled robot that drives to the scene when an alarm goes off. The two devices launch a product line called Ring Robotics, which Amazon describes as “a new category of autonomous, mobile security”.
Amazon shared the announcement on X at 13:38 UTC on 10 November, which was 05:38 Pacific time. Jamie Siminoff, Ring’s founder and chief inventor, said the thinking behind the robots was that “the honest answer wasn’t more cameras”, and that it “meant reimagining what a security device could be”. Posts that spread quickly on X on Tuesday described both machines as home security robots.
Amazon’s own material, however, presents the Rover Cam as a robot for businesses, while only the Drone Cam is meant for homes.
How the Ring Drone Cam patrols your home on its own
Drone Cam is an indoor camera that rests in a dock out of sight, where it powers down with its camera switched off. Owners can send it along custom routes on a schedule or launch it on demand from the Ring app, and it starts recording only when a flight begins. If a Ring camera, sensor or alarm is triggered, the drone flies by itself to preset patrol points to look into what happened. It records 2K video with a 148-degree field of view, can rotate through 360 degrees and switches on two LED lights in low light.
Both robots run on a system Ring calls AI Pilot, which combines their cameras, vision models, on-device sensors and cloud processing. According to Amazon, it maps the space, recognises rooms and suggests patrol points such as side doors, windows and long corridors, and owners can add their own. The drone also works with Alexa Home Map and with Ring’s doorbells, cameras, sensors and alarms. Amazon openly says the propellers are not quiet, so the drone is unlikely to patrol a room unnoticed.
There is a catch for anyone hoping to order one today. Amazon’s announcement states that Drone Cam “has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission”, and that it cannot be sold or leased until it is. Customers can only sign up for email updates on Amazon at this stage, and scheduled flights and reviewing footage will need a compatible Ring Protect subscription. Ring has not said whether the drone will launch outside the United States.
What the $999.99 Ring Rover Cam does for shops and offices
The Rover Cam is a wheeled robot built for businesses, and it is already available to pre-order in the US ahead of shipping on 16 December. It patrols on its own, runs scheduled sweeps and drives to preset points when an alarm or sensor is triggered, scanning 360 degrees when it arrives. An adjustable periscope mast lets its camera see over counters and shelving, and owners can save a different height for each stop. Ring says on its Ring Robotics page that a single robot can cover up to 5,000 square feet.
The Rover Cam streams and records up to 4K video while it moves, and it carries a siren, a light tower and two-way audio. It can watch for people continuously and start recording even while docked, while a Sleep Mode retracts the mast and switches off the microphone with one tap. Ring also lists a mobile security installation service starting at $499 per device. Small shops are frequent targets, as the recent Tacoma card shop raid showed, when thieves drove a pickup into the store and took $50,000 in Pokémon and Magic cards.
Amazon says the Rover Cam was inspired by owners of Astro, its home robot, who liked using it to patrol their homes. It is also the company’s second attempt at a security robot for businesses. Astro for Business launched in late 2023 at about $2,350 per robot plus a monthly subscription, but Amazon wound it down within a year, and the robots stopped working on 25 September 2024. Amazon said at the time that it wanted to focus on bringing robots into the home.
Ring’s Always Home Cam history and its record on privacy
Drone Cam is not Ring’s first flying camera. In September 2020, the company unveiled the Always Home Cam, an indoor drone at the same $249.99 price, and later opened invitation requests for it. That drone never went on general sale, so Drone Cam is in effect Ring’s second try at the idea. Amazon also sold Astro on an invitation basis when it first launched in 2021.
Any camera that moves through a home raises questions about who can see its footage. In May 2023, Ring agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that employees and contractors had access to customers’ private videos. The FTC said one employee viewed thousands of recordings of female users, and it sent more than $5.6 million in refunds to Ring customers in April 2024. Amazon says videos from the new robots are protected by Throw Away the Key encryption, which it calls Ring’s strongest default encryption yet.
Ring’s relationship with police has also changed several times. In early 2024, it stopped letting police request footage through its Neighbors app, and it later launched Community Requests, which lets owners choose whether to share videos with officers working active investigations. In February, Ring cancelled a planned integration with the number plate camera company Flock Safety, saying the work would take far more time and resources than expected. It added that the integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock.
Privacy has stayed close to the centre of gadget news this year, well beyond Ring. TalkEsport readers have seen the same debate in stories such as Logitech’s G HUB policy listing camera usage data and Discord messages becoming searchable on Google. Both new Ring robots have LED indicators that show when they are recording. The Rover Cam ships first, on 16 December, while the Drone Cam’s 27 January date depends on FCC authorisation.
