Imagine having a personal butler to greet you when you get home and do chores around the house. Except for a few very rich individuals, this is simply a fantasty.
But some of the world’s largest tech companies presenting this week at CES in Las Vegas are trying to make personal butlers for all a reality.
Electronics makers LG and Samsung have unveiled their robot home assistants that can scoot around the house and perform little tasks like playing music if you’re in a foul mood, reminding you to take a pill, feeding the dog (if you have a smart pet feeder), facilitating video calls between family members – things of that nature.
All you have to do in return – besides shell out $1,000 or more – is let it track your habits and your moods, let it learn your face and your children’s faces, let it map your home, give it your medication schedules, and generally let it in on the details of your private home life.
Samsung’s Ballie, which has not been released yet, can apparently distract your dog from ripping up the sofa. But it can’t do your dishes
When connected to other smart home devices, Samsung said, Ballie can activate them. It’s unclear why you would want to tell the robot to tell the pet food dispenser to dispense food, when you can just command the device without a robot middleman
Customers would provide these devices with vast access to their daily home lives, but so far, the advantages of having them around are unclear.
Samsung introduced a new version of its Ballie robot, a small yellow ball that rolls around your house.
It contains AI-powered camera hardware and a projector.
It can recognize your face and greet you when you come home. You can send it a text to tell it to check on the dog. It can project video calls, workouts, or any other work or entertainment visuals on the wall.
According to Samsung, Ballie can control ‘air conditioners, lights, laundry machines, and more.’
Samsung did not announce a cost for the robot, which connects to other smart home devices, but based on the cost of other smart home robots, like the less decked out Enabot Ebo X, it’s safe to expect it will be north of $1,000.
The company has not announced a release date, either.
Competitor LG also released an AI robot butler at CES this week, which the company calls its ‘smart home agent.’
It’s a small white device that also rolls around the home, but it looks a bit more like a creature, including a digital screen for a face.
LG announced its smart home AI agent at a press conference at CES this week in Las Vegas. The device is not yet available to the public, and a launch date is unknown
LG’s smart home AI agent looks more like a living thing than Samsung’s Ballie does. Neither product is yet on the market
Like Ballie, the smart home agent can follow you around and perform tiny, information-based chores – nothing as useful as laundry or washing dishes.
In the launch announcement press conference, LG officials proudly emphasized that the smart home agent can learn your moods and habits, and may prompt you with cheery music if you seem sad.
This isn’t all it does, but it is an example of LG’s overall vision for a smart home robot that can learn and predict customers’ habits.
At the moment, the mechanical creature remains unnamed, and no price or release date have been announced.
So while you may soon be able to have a robot butler in your home, it’s not clear that it would be able to do all that much for you besides gather data on your habits.
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