At CES this year, LG has announced their vision for the future and it involves robots. Lots of robots, not just for inside your home, but also for around the house and out in the real world.
The LG line of robot assistants includes the Hub Robot, a smart hub for connecting all your Internet of Things devices, two airport based robots, the Airport Guide Robot and the Airport Cleaning Robot which will either assist travellers in getting to their gate, or keep the airport clean and finally a lawn mowing robot that will take care of the quarter acre block that’s part of the Australian dream. These are only the beginning though, with LG also announcing future plans to build robots for Senior care and Security Services.
The Hub Robot is a friendly looking ‘bot, with a face that can emote as you interact with it with head nods and verbal responses – it can also swivel and move around too. You can talk to the Hub Robot issuing commands to control your appliances for example turning on your air conditioner or start a load of washing using Amazon’s Alexa voice recognition technology. There’s other convenient functions that the Hub Robot can perform such as playing music, setting alarms or feed you information about weather or traffic, all you have to do is talk to it.
Family friendly, the Hub Robot uses an on-board camera with face recognition to get to know your family members, learning their habits and it can even greet each family member differently. It’s LG’s way to personalise the device, making it seem a little more ‘human’ and encouraging you to interact with it.
As a complement to the Hub Robot, smaller mini-robots that will remain in place around your home will sit waiting for you to talk to them – they appear to be a smaller version of the Hub Robot, though with some functionality such as movement removed.
As part of their home launch, LG also introduced their lawn mowing robot, it’s a smart robot that will map your yard accounting for obstacles such as trees/hedges and moves around them as necessary. So now, with their smart robot vacuum cleaners there could be bots all over your house.
The release of home based robots is being followed up by the launch of two other robots specifically designed for use in airports. There’s the Airport Guide Robot and the Airport Cleaning Robot, with both robots using sensors
If you’re interested in LG’s robotic vision of the future, there’s not much information on how much it will cost, nor when you will be able to get your hands on one. LG will be displaying their new robots in their booth at CES this week and I’ll be dropping past to get a closer look and find out more information.
I was going to ask jokingly whether there was a robot to mow the lawn. I was gobsmacked to then read there is one!