- Ring is finally ready to ship its home-surveillance drone
- The Ring Drone Cam is lighter than some smartphones
- A cloud-based AI Pilot does all the driving
Third time may be the charm for Ring’s long-gestating security drone efforts — and Ring CEO Jamie Simioff insists that the new Ring Drone Cam is just what his customers want.
“When people stop me on the street, it’s what they ask, ‘Where’s the drone?'” Simioff told me.
After a decade of effort, which traces back to before Ring became a part of the giant Amazon device family, Ring is finally ready to deliver a home security drone that makes sense.
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Sure, perhaps we’ve heard this before, and Siminoff wasn’t shy about recounting Ring’s abortive drone history. That history started with an idea in 2016, which led to a drone that Siminoff said launched in 2021 but not to customers. “They were in boxes and ready to go,” he added (design trade-offs, limited flight time, privacy concerns, and other issues ultimately scuttled that launch). By 2025, Ring was ready with another attempt, but that drone also never shipped.
As Sminioff described it, Ring was overcomplicating the drones, building in too many capabilities. A smart drone — basically a flying robot with all the attendant sensors — was the wrong approach. So Ring went back to the drawing board but with a critical learning: “The more sensors you take off, the lighter you can go, because you’re using less power.”
He said Ring decided to “take all the intelligence out” and shifted it to the cloud. The resulting security drone is ultra-light (around 160 grams) and has just a few native skills, which include knowing how to land and how to connect via Wi-Fi to the app.
The App connects to Ring’s new AI Pilot, which uses cloud-based, silicon-powered agents to control the drone. Not that the drone is flying blind. It has a front camera, a base camera, and the guidance of the AI Pilot, which is using a brand-new home map.
Ring Drone Cam owners will be able to use the drone to walk through their home and build a detailed map, which Siminoff described as a “digital twin” of your space.
If, for instance, you detect a rear door open or a window ajar in your home (via one of Ring’s sensors that they assume you’ll have throughout your home), you can tap on the location in the digital house map and the Ring Drone Cam will lift off from its home charge base and fly directly to it.
The AI Pilot knows the map of your home, so it won’t be bouncing off walls and, if someone does happen to be in the way, the Ring Drone Cam will know how to get around them. Siminoff admitted, though, that the drone is simply not smart enough to come up with an alternative route to get around, say, a group of people.
A relatively simple and lightweight flyer, the Ring Drone Cam is quite loud, and Siminoff says that’s intentional. “It’s loud — we think that’s a feature. This thing is not gonna sneak up on you.”
In fact, the use case he envisions is when nobody is home, though he agreed that if you’re home asleep and there’s movement downstairs, it could come in handy then, too. The sound alone might scare off intruders.
(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
The Ring Drone Cam is not designed to go outside, but it can peer out of a window. Imagine that someone approaches your front door, and the Ring Doorbell detects them. The Drone Cam could get the alert, lift off, and shine its LED spotlights out the window.
I asked Siminoff if the Ring app would support split-screen, so you could see the Drone and Doorbell footage side-by-side. He said it didn’t, but that he liked the idea.
In the app, Ring Drone Cam owners can schedule automated home patrols that include multiple floors, since this drone can traverse stairways. The drone keeps track of the ground below but has no sensor for the ceiling. It also depends on that Wi-Fi connection for navigation. If your home internet cuts out, the Drone will basically land where it is, assuming it’s safe to do so.
Speaking of safety, all four propellers are inside cages, so even if the lightweight drone does somehow run into you, you’re unlikely to get injured. Siminoff also said that the Drone Cam promises the same level of video privacy as you find on the brand’s video doorbells, which includes two-factor authentication and encryption. Also, as soon as the drone lands, it stops filming, and the charging dock also covers the camera when the drone is settled inside.
As you might expect for such a small and lightweight drone, the Ring Drone Cam doesn’t offer much flight time, cruising for roughly five to eight minutes on a charge (consumer drones can often fly for up to 30 minutes). Charging could take between 40 minutes and an hour, though I imagine its patrol flights might just be a minute or two, after which the drone would return to its charging base.
Assuming that this is the drone Ring finally ships, the Ring Drone Cam will be available in the US only (Ring hasn’t announced any plans to expand the launch) from January 27 for $249.99 and will be available in dark gray. The white units I saw were all pre-production, and there are currently no plans to offer a white option.
The return of Astro
Remember Amazon Astro, the sort-of-cute patrol robot that Amazon launched in 2021 and discontinued in 2024? It’s back, in a fashion.
Using Astro as a base, Ring rebuilt it, added a light tower, and rechristened it the Ring Rover Cam. And while the Ring Rover Cam could be used in a home, it’s really designed for medium-to-small businesses — and at $999.99 it’s priced for those customers, too,
(Image credit: Lance Ulanoff / Future)
The reimagined robot can autonomously map a space, perform 30-minute patrols (we watched it roll around a fake Amazon inventory space), and pop up its periscope camera, which can extend to about four feet.
Ring has added one hardware feature: a new light tower that shines up at the ceiling. If you lose visual track of where the Rover Cam is, you can just look for a blue circle on the ceiling. In the case of an emergency, the robot lets out a piercing alarm, and that blue light turns into a spinning ambulance-like red one.
The Ring Rover Cam ships in the US from December 16.
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lance.ulanoff@futurenet.com (Lance Ulanoff)
