Imagine having a personal butler who greets you when you come home and does chores around the house. Except for a few very wealthy individuals, this is simply a fantasy.
But some of the world’s biggest tech companies at CES in Las Vegas this week are trying to make personal butlers a reality for everyone.
Electronics makers LG and Samsung have unveiled their robot home assistants that can run around the house and perform small tasks like playing music when you’re in a bad 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 – apart from paying out €1,000 or more – is let the app track your habits and your moods, get to know your face and the faces of your children, map your house your medication schedules, and generally get into the details of your private life at home.
Samsung’s Ballie, which hasn’t yet been released, can apparently distract your dog from tearing up the couch. But it can’t do your dishes
When Ballie is connected to other smart home devices, Samsung says, 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 simply operate the device without the robot intermediary
These devices would provide customers with expanded access to their daily lives at home, but so far the benefits of having them are unclear.
Samsung is introducing a new version of its Ballie robot, a small yellow ball that rolls around your house.
It includes AI-powered camera hardware and a projector.
It can recognize your face and greet you when you come home. You can text him to tell him to look at the dog. It can project video calls, training or other work or entertainment images on the wall.
According to Samsung, Ballie can control “air conditioners, lights, washing machines and more.”
Samsung hasn’t announced a cost for the robot, which connects to other smart home devices, but based on the cost of other smart home robots, such as the less decked out Enabot Ebo Xit’s safe to expect it to be north of $1,000.
The company has also not announced a release date.
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 house, but it looks a bit more like a creature, including a digital screen for a face.
LG announced its smart home AI agent this week during a press conference at CES 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 creature than Samsung’s Ballie. Neither product is yet on the market
Like Ballie, the smart home agent can follow you around and perform small, intelligence-based chores – none as useful as laundry or dishes.
During the launch announcement press conference, LG officials proudly emphasized that the smart home agent can learn your moods and habits, and wake you up with happy music when you seem sad.
This isn’t all it does, but it’s an example of LG’s overall vision for a smart home robot that can learn and predict customer habits.
At the moment, the mechanical creature has no name and no price or release date has been announced.
So while you may soon be able to have a robot butler in your home, it’s not clear whether it can do that much for you beyond collecting data about your habits.