Samsung expects to ship Ballie, its futuristic AI robot, later this year

By Jon Bitner Published January 10, 2025

A close-up look at Ballie from the side. — Samsung

Samsung first revealed Ballie several years ago at CES 2020 — only for the home bot to go dark, before reemerging with a new design at CES 2024. At CES 2025, Ballie once again took the stage, and Samsung is officially claiming that the adorable robot will be coming to store shelves sometime this year. It’s been a long time coming, but it seems as if Ballie is ready to become your new household companion, and we’re excited about all the possibilities it can bring to your smart home.

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Ballie is a home bot that makes liberal use of AI technology. It’s billed as a “self-propelled, autonomous home robot” designed with companionship, health monitoring, and entertainment features to help streamline your day-to-day tasks. Its built-in projector and speakers are the main way it’ll communicate with users, and they seem to be pretty robust.

A demo from Samsung showed Ballie projecting details about a local Las Vegas attraction on the ground when prompted by a user. It would later automatically turn its projector toward a blank wall to give directions on a map, using the wall’s larger surface area to create a bigger image with more detail.

Balllie projecting images on a wall. — Samsung

Beyond directions, Ballie works as a standard projector for movies, capable of resizing the screen dimensions via voice commands. Ballie’s quality won’t make it a good fit for your home theater — but with the flexibility to project on any surface and a solid set of speakers, it’s a versatile feature that should get plenty of use around your home.

As expected, Ballie can sync with various smart devices so you can activate them through voice commands.

Samsung has also integrated cool visual AI functions into Ballie, allowing you to ask it questions based on its surroundings. The CES demo included a user holding two bottles of wine asking Ballie which would be a better meal pairing, turning the robot into a venerable sommelier.

Sadly, a firm release date and pricing details were not confirmed at CES 2025. We can’t image it’ll be cheap, however, with many other home robots carrying price tags over $1,000 — including the Enabot X. Amazon’s robot, Astro, is even more expensive at $1,600. Expect to hear more details from Samsung in the coming months.

Jon Bitner is a writer covering consumer electronics, technology, and gaming. His work has been published on various websites…

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