Bear in mind Ballie, Samsung’s spherical house robotic from CES 2020? I positive didn’t — till Samsung introduced it again at this 12 months’s keynote with a couple of on-trend AI upgrades.

The brand new and improved Ballie, which Samsung previewed throughout its press convention at CES 2024 in Las Vegas at present, is across the dimension of a bowling ball, packing a battery that’s designed to final two to 3 hours. Ballie sports activities a spatial lidar sensor to assist it navigate rooms and obstacles, in addition to 1080p projector with two lenses that permits the robotic to undertaking motion pictures and video calls even act as a second PC monitor.

“Use [Ballie] to undertaking photos and stream content material on partitions, and it might routinely modify the image based mostly on the wall distance and lighting situations,” Samsung writes in press launch. “It [can] routinely detect folks’s posture and facial angle and modify the optimum projection angle for you.”

Picture Credit: Samsung

Ballie may be managed with voice instructions or, intriguing, requests despatched by way of textual content message (e.g. “play a film on the closest wall”). Within the latter case, Ballie will reply with assistance from a chatbot to substantiate requests earlier than taking motion.

Like different house robots in its class, Ballie can routinely activate good lights and, due to a built-in infrared transmitter, “non-smart” gadgets like air conditioners and older TVs. And the robotic can map a ground plan, figuring out the place good gadgets is perhaps situated inside a house.

Samsung’s promising quite a bit past these fundamentals, like automated reminders to water crops round the home, entry to distant medical providers (for older family members) and personalization relying on who the robotic senses close by. However the particulars of those — as with Ballie’s availability and pricing — have but to be hashed out intimately.