Samsung’s cute (until his AI burns down the house) home help robot Ballie is finally going on sale this year. And, with Apple rumoured to be considering a Siri-powered robot of its own, the timing couldn’t be better.
After infrequently showing up at CES with mad new skills and design revamps, before disappearing for actual years at a time, Samsung is finally ready to – quite literally – roll out Ballie.
Announced during the Samsung keynote in Las Vegas, the Minion-esque, bowling ball-sized device will be available during the first half of the year. However, no price was revealed.
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The mention was extremely brief, but the long-awaited device still has its key feature, which is the built-in projector that’ll beam images or videos onto various surfaces in the home. Samsung has previously demonstrated fitness videos, video calls, or extra displays for computing products as potential uses for the light beam.
However, beyond that we don’t know what advancements Samsung has made to Ballie over the last 12 months and whether what has previously been previewed will make it into the consumer version.
Last year at CES, Samsung went into detail on the LiDAR sensors that would enable the AI robot to be at your beck and call by following you around the house without crashing into your furniture.
For example, Samsung demonstrated a user asking Ballie to “play a movie on the nearest wall” or you can say “follow me to the study, I’ve got to make a video call”.
It has also been pitched as a helpful smart home aide, taking care of smart lights, curtains, and the television. It’s may also be smart enough to know you’re off to bed and enable a smart home bedtime routine. Then do the opposite in the morning.
A year ago, Samsung also previewed the ability to babysit your pets while you’re at work. It could feed the dog, monitor its activity and report any egregious bad boy behaviour. Ballie could “feed Copper some snacks and play his favourite video” in order to distract him from the destruction. Those snacks will be dropped from a smart feeder, thanks to the robot’s intervention.
An AI chatbot, now likely powered by Galaxy AI, was also on board to read your messages to you and enable you to reply.
Whether any of these features make it into the final version of Ballie – which first showed up at CES 2020 with a tennis ball-like design – remains to be seen.
Perhaps we’ll hear more when Samsung unveils the Galaxy S25 series at an Unpacked event planned for January 22?
