The company sees robots as life companions in what it calls the ‘Age of Experience.’
Samsung’s CES keynote got off to an intriguing start when H.S. Kim revealed a robot designed to help you around the home. The company says it designed Ballie to understand and support your needs — essentially, it can run your smart home for you.
The rolling robot is also designed to act as a fitness assistant and has a “mobile interface” that looks for solutions to your changing needs using built-in AI functions. Samsung says Ballie’s held to “stringent data protection and privacy standards.”
A demo video showed Ballie opening smart curtains and turning on the TV for a dog when its human was away from home (and sending a video of the placated pooch to said human). It also called a robot vacuum into action after it noticed a spill.
The Ballie name actually emerged in trademark filings last month. Samsung said it wanted to use the term for robots with various functions, such as cleaning, teaching, security surveillance and daily chores.
If that spherical form factor seems familiar, LG revealed a robot ball back in 2016. The Rolling Bot was designed to carry out household tasks and even take photos of your pets and send them to you when you’re not home.
Samsung didn’t say when you might expect to buy your own Ballie nor how much it’ll cost. It looks more like a tennis ball than BB-8, sadly, but it could be pretty useful anyway.
