During the last Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Samsung introduced its new project – Ballie.
Ballie is a small, round robot the size of a handball. It is a control center made to keep guard on your house, control all your smart house devices and even keep a company of your pet.
It includes key features making the life of users easy and comfortable such as voice activation or even autonomous instant capturing allowing it to save all important moments of your life. What’s better than a device recording the first steps of your child?!
This revolutionary device is an AI-based device developed to be linked to all your other connected devices. For example, being able to turn on the TV when needed, close the blinds when the sun is shining or even turn on your speaker when you want to enjoy some music. The technology used also makes Ballie act smoothly and discreetly in order to respect your personal space and be quasi invisible in your house.
“We want Ballie to keep our secrets,” Samsung consumer electronics CEO H.S. Kim told attendees. “We want an AI we can trust. We are working hard to bring all of this [to Ballie].”
During the presentation, Kim showed how Ballie can interact with its users and home devices. People could see how it is moving on its own, coming to its owner (H.S. Kim in this case), pairing and controlling air purifier or even making sounds as if it wants to communicate with us. This makes it the perfect companion for its users’ daily life.
However, this project is still kept at some point a mystery. There is no release date or precise cost of Ballie given so far. Nevertheless, what we know for now are the main abilities of this robot and its future availability in various colors.
References:
https://news.samsung.com/us/samsung-ballie-ces-2020/
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/07/tech/samsung-ballie-ces-2020/index.html
https://mashable.com/article/samsung-ballie-robot-ces/?europe=true
WOW these are the things we saw in sci-fi films when we were kids who would have thought we would get so see and use it.This is simply mind blowing
One of the main advantages of Ballie seems to be its mobility. One device saves us having to equip the apartment with other improvements. Samsung’s robot would be enough for the whole house instead of a number of cameras. In the same way, we can limit the number of smart speakers in the whole apartment. Instead of having a smart loudspeaker in each room, all we need to do is have a Ballie following us when we feel like it.
However, the aspect of multitasking and prioritization by the robot is questionable. Everything looks very convincing when there is one person in the video and Ballie has no problem deciding who to follow. What if there are more people at home which usually happens? Will we need several robots?