Ring, Amazon's home security brand, announced a new hardware division on Tuesday called Ring Robotics, and with it the first indoor security drone the company has actually committed to shipping. The Ring Drone Cam, an autonomous flying camera for homes, costs $249.99 and starts shipping January 27, 2027. Its sibling, the Ring Rover Cam, a $999.99 wheeled security robot for businesses, arrives earlier, on December 16, and is available for pre-order now in the US.
Neither device is remotely piloted. Both run on AI Pilot, Ring's new navigation system that combines onboard cameras, vision models and sensors with cloud processing to build an interior map, suggest patrol points such as a side door or a window, and move between them autonomously. When another Ring camera, sensor or alarm is triggered, both devices can fly or drive to investigate and stream live video. The drone integrates with the Alexa Home Map announced at Amazon's October event.
The Drone Cam records 2K video with a 148-degree field of view and 360-degree rotation, carries two LED spotlights, and automatically returns to its charging dock, where its camera is physically blocked and powered off. The flight time is a frankly modest five to eight minutes, which makes the drone less a roaming guardian than a point-and-shoot responder: it undocks, follows a preset route or answers an alarm, and comes home. It is also deliberately loud; founder Jamie Siminoff framed the noise and lights as a deterrent to intruders.
The Rover Cam is aimed at warehouses, offices and storefronts rather than living rooms. It moves on a wheeled base with a telescoping periscope camera that rises to see over counters and shelving, streams up to 4K, and can patrol on a schedule, such as after closing, or investigate disturbances triggered by other Ring devices. Ring pitches it as a "security guard that never clocks out," a competitor to wiring every square meter of a large space with fixed cameras. Autonomous patrol features sit behind a Ring Protect subscription.
The shipping commitment is the story here. Ring showed flying camera concepts in 2020, 2021 and 2025 and never put them on shelves; Siminoff said the company redesigned the product at the last minute in 2025 after working through a cycle where more sensors meant more power, more weight and more danger. This time the drone is assembled in the United States, a detail Ring ties to compliance with the current US restrictions on drones and robots made overseas, and Ring says it is fully ready to ship.
Two caveats temper the launch. The Drone Cam has not yet received FCC authorization, and the announcement notes it may not be offered for sale until it does. And autonomous indoor surveillance is a different privacy proposition from a doorbell: Ring is leaning on visibility rather than concealment, with audible propellers, recording indicators and default encryption, but regulators and state privacy laws have not yet weighed in on patrol robots in homes. How that lands may shape whether this category takes off or joins Astro in Amazon's drawer of ambitious robots.
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