- Samsung’s Ballie robot is back at CES 2025.
- It has an identical design to the one shown in 2024, with new ‘Vision AI’ features.
- Samsung says Ballie will launch in the first half of 2025 with support for English, Spanish and Korean for an unknown price.
If you’ve been wondering where Samsung’s cheerful yellow AI robot has been, we finally know the answer. Ballie, Samsung’s robot, which was first introduced in 2020 and then relaunched last year in 2024 with a load of AI, will arrive in 2025, specifically in the first half.
Ballie is still bright yellow with wheels to move around the house, a boat full of sensors, and a projector that allows him to play games, answer questions, and even project movies on various surfaces. And I had the opportunity, along with TechRadar Lifestyle Editor-in-Chief Josephine Watson, to see Ballie firsthand and see how she performs some moves.
And yes, it’s still undeniably cute and, thanks to the wheels, will glide effortlessly across flat surfaces; This last demonstration was performed on a softwood surface in a pre-mapped space. It still has a front projector, which is a Full HD triple laser projector and should offer quality close to that of the Premiere 5. Additionally, it is the world’s first interchangeable lens projector, allowing it to project content both up close and up. far.
Why is that important? Well, in this demo, we saw that it lists options on the floor in front of you, but you can also broadcast content like directions to the Sphere from Caesar’s Palace or project a movie on the wall.
It is voice activated thanks to four built-in far-field microphones and responds to “Hey Ballie.” It gets its vision from two cameras, a 2K camera on the back and a 4K camera on the front, as well as sensors including LiDAR and a time-of-flight (ToF) sensor. Our hope is that learning from the slightly shaky AI performance of Samsung’s Samsung Bespoke Jet Bot Combo has been taken into account.
Samsung promises a launch in 2025, specifically in the first half of the year, with support in English, Spanish and Korean. However, the company did not provide any clues about exact pricing, features, or specifications, or even confirmed launch regions.
Just like saying “Hey Google” on an Android smartphone or asking for Siri on a HomePod, Ballie is a fully responsive voice-activated robot. It’s still billed as an AI robot companion that can glide around your home and essentially be at your beck and call. As you might suspect, it’s set to integrate with other devices, including the ability to control them. I assume this is enabled through SmartThings, but in this demo, Ballie was asked to turn on a connected light and monitor function in a gaming setup.
We also saw Ballie provide a list of things to do in Las Vegas, suggesting the Bellagio and Sphere fountains; He was able to understand a more conversational response and then gave us more information about the Sphere. When first asked, and Ballie was directly in front of the user, he projected the list onto the ground; He then chose to project a larger view with more details about the Sphere, including images, on the wall.
It will apparently automatically decide where to stream the content, but you can be more specific and even request a larger screen when streaming a movie; It could even change the surface on which it is transmitted.
As for the interesting path to Ballie’s launch, we asked Lydia Cho, Samsung’s home entertainment product manager.
“We really wanted to perfect it, making sure it came to market at the right time, with the right features and the right concept. That’s why the process took a little longer, but I think it’s really the right time for us to launch VisionAI,” Cho explained. He also highlighted that the new AI suite, which will also launch on Samsung’s latest TVs, is all about personalization and personalization.
Noting that this device can be customized to your lifestyle and is squarely focused on perfecting interaction, Cho says, “We think it’s the perfect companion for you to meet all your needs,” before noting that it can tell you the weather, where you want to go, your dietary needs, your child’s homework, and even your schedule.
Even so, there’s still a path to market for Ballie, and it will be interesting to see the final feature set, technical specifications, Samsung’s presentation to consumers, and how well it performs in the real world. We haven’t been able to really direct Ballie or see it outside of a test space yet, but it’s clear that robots are a sector that won’t go away. Ballie, with its cheerful yellow paint, is certainly less scary or unassuming than Telsa’s humanoid robot or Boston Dynamics’ robot dog, and with Amazon’s Astro in a perpetual invite-only state, there’s room to dominate the market, if Samsung plays his cards well.
Remember, this is the day before CES starts, and Samsung showed it off before its official press conference at its First Look event, usually reserved for new home entertainment. It’s clear that Ballie is mission-critical and you can bet we’re trying to get more formal hands-on experience.
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