CES 2024: LG announces walking, talking, ‘Jetsons-esque’ smart home robot
LG is entering its Jetsons era with a smart home robot. At CES 2024 on Monday, LG unveiled an AI smart home agent that acts as your very own “Rosie” from the futuristic cartoon.
Rosie comes to mind, because the AI agent isn’t just a smart hub or disembodied AI voice assistant. It’s a little two-legged robot (an upgrade from Rosie’s precarious single wheel) that actually putters around your home, helping you with your chores through LG’s smart home appliances.
The housekeeping bot is part of LG’s “Zero Labor Home” initiative that’s built around interconnected smart home appliances. In LG’s keynote on Monday, CEO William Cho talked about how data gathered from LG’s products can be harnessed to train its artificial intelligence in understanding and even predicting customer’s behaviors and needs. It comes as no surprise that LG focused big time on AI and IoT. If 2023 was the year of ChatGPT and the AI chatbot, then 2024 is shaping up to be the year we see generative AI applied to hardware, wearables, and robotics.
The AI agent operates through LG’s smart home platform ThinQ, which connects to the company’s lineup of smart appliances that include washer/dryers, ovens, and refrigerators. The robot has face and user recognition, relying on machine learning to understand context, so its responses and communications are tailored to individual members of the home. It’s powered by a generative AI large language model, so you can chat with it while you’re, say, folding the laundry.
But all of that is doable with any other smart home hub on the market. What separates LG’s AI agent from the rest is its mobility. The robot can serve as a pet monitor and patrol the house for open windows or lights left on while you’re out. It can also alert you when you need to take medications and make emergency calls.
Plus, it is designed to greet you at the door when you come home and can read your mood based on voice and facial analysis — no doubt, the most 60s-era-robot-housekeeper-aspect of the device. To recap: what’s old is new, and science fiction has become reality. Sounds about right for CES 2024.