Samsung Ballie the Cute Rolling Robot for Smart Home Management - Everything We Know at This Time
What is Ballie | Release date | Price | Rumours | What countries will Ballie be released in
At CES held in Las Vegas this year, Samsung introduced an innovative new guest/assistant — Ballie, a palm-sized rolling robot equipped with a camera that follows you around and intuits your smart home needs.
Ballie is essentially an AI-driven smart home manager. The palm-sized ball rolls around behind you, sensing your presence and that of other obstacles. It can also sense other smart objects and it silently controls them to help you go about your day.
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This article will be updated as soon as we hear more news from Samsung: Release date: TBC - We think Ballie won't be released for a while, Samsung still hasn't released the Samsung Galaxy Home announced August 2018. There could still be a lot of work to do. We'll estimate 2022. Price: TBC - If we have to take a guess we'd estimate around the $400 mark. Amazon released the Echo for $180 back in 2014 and this little guy can do way more. Samsung will also not want to overprice it too much, as this will incur criticism if it's not up to scratch yet. Available in which countries: TBC - Probably US and Korea first, then UK, Germany, France, Japan. |
In the introductory video, we can see Ballie following a person and their dog around their home, silently performing actions like adjusting the blinds, starting the washing machine, or controlling the robot vacuum cleaner. Equipped with on-device AI capabilities, you can also use Ballie as a fitness assistant to help with your workouts.
The concept of rolling robots isn’t completely new. The first-ever rolling robot — introduced in 2007 — was Sony’s Rolly music bot. Another rolling robot — unveiled by LG in 2016 — had an 8-megapixel camera and it served as a moving security camera/ intercom. The aforementioned rolling robots didn’t capture the market and eventually phased out — we’re yet to see if Ballie will successfully capture the market or follow in its predecessors’ footsteps.
H.S. Kim, the President and CEO of Consumer Electronics Division, Samsung Electronics, said that Ballie is a part of their ‘Age of Experience’. He characterized this period as one in which devices are better capable of interacting with each other, controlling each other, and intuiting all of your needs so you can go about your day carefree.
Samsung hasn’t made any announcements about when Ballie will finally be released or how much it would cost. However, we’re eager to see if this palm-sized rolling robot will truly be a disruptive force in the next phase of smart homes or a novelty doomed to fizzle out.
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