Samsung’s “Ballie” home robot is back, way bigger, and headed to production
Ballie is now the size of a bowling ball. [credit: Samsung ]
Four years ago at CES 2020, one of Samsung's quirkier little projects was "Ballie," a cute little ball robot that would wheel around the house, stream camera footage, and act as a roving smart speaker. The coolest thing about 2020 Ballie was that it would have looked right at home on the set of a Star Wars movie-it was a ball droid, where the wheels were integrated into the spherical body. At CES 2024, Ballie is back with a new design, and according to a report from The Washington Post, it will puportedly hit the market sometime this year. Although much like a concept car being watered down to make it to production, the 2024 Ballie lost much of the prototype's cute appeal.
The 2024 Ballie is no longer a ball droid, and instead is a sphere mounted on three wheels, giving it basically the same locomotion as a robot vacuum. The new Ballie is also bigger, growing from about the size of a softball to the size of a bowling ball, and it's now a two-handed lift. This bigger size can give production Ballie a more practical battery size and make room for a projector. It looks like the sides of the sphere body are stationary (that's where the wheels are mounted), while the sphere's center can still rotate up or down, allowing Ballie to aim the camera/projector mounted on the front.
Take a guess at how Ballie sees the world. I see two cameras, a big projector in the center, and two other mystery sensors. (credit: Samsung)
It looks like there are five sensor windows on Ballie's front visor. The big center rectangle is the projector, with a camera on the left and right side, giving the bot stereo vision. The other sensors are a mystery. Maybe they are robot navigation sensors like time-of-flight. The back features a lot of openings, which probably include a speaker. A robot vacuum would have visible metal contacts for autonomous docking and charging, but there are no clear ports, connectors, or a dock for charging.