Samsung's AI ball robot Ballie to be launched with Google Gemini this summer
The spherical robot is based on Google's generative AI and is intended to serve as a household assistant. Ballie will be available in Korea and the USA.
Samsung Ballie
(Image: Samsung)
Several years after the ball robot was first presented, Samsung is launching Ballie on the market this summer. However, the South Korean company is initially limiting itself to its home country and the United States. The ball-shaped robot is intended to serve as a personal assistant in the home and is equipped with Google Gemini, the data company's generative AI. Ballie will not only be able to manage the smart home, but will also be capable of natural conversation.
Samsung had already presented a precursor to Ballie at CES 2020, more than five years ago. Samsung then presented the first functions of the home assistant in 2024. At the beginning of this year, at CES 2025, Samsung showed the Ballie AI robot for the home again and announced it for the first half of 2025. The robot should then be able to be used as a personal assistant in the home and perform various tasks there.
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The robot is shaped like a ball and rolls along on three wheels. It cannot climb stairs, so it is limited to use on one floor if users would rather not carry it to the next floor themselves. Ballie is equipped with two cameras: a 4K camera at the front and a 2K camera at the back. They are supported by various sensors such as a Lidar module (Light Detection and Ranging), which allow it to navigate autonomously in household environments and make it suitable for surveillance tasks in apartments, for example.
Spherical robot with projector and Google AI
Ballie's most striking feature is an integrated laser projector that can project videos, photos and information onto walls and floors. The projector's projection unit is designed to be movable. Ballie can also display buttons on the floor, which can then trigger functions at the touch of a foot. However, users should not expect a great miracle of light. Sound is output via a loudspeaker.
Ballie receives instructions via an integrated microphone. This can be used to operate smart home devices by voice command, for example. An integrated AI should be able to answer various questions in just a few seconds. Samsung has now brought Google on board to integrate Gemini's multimodal reasoning into the robots. Together with Samsung's own large AI language models, Ballie can "process and understand a variety of inputs, including audio and voice data, visual data from its camera and sensor data from its environment".
Price and EU availability still unclear
The robot should not only be able to assist with electronic tasks, but also with health and well-being. According to Samsung, if the user tells Ballie that they are tired, the robot can give individual tips based on Google AI, for example to improve energy levels through exercise or to optimize sleeping conditions.
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At a demonstration of Ballie earlier this year, Samsung showed how an employee held out two bottles of wine to the robot and asked it to make a recommendation. The robot recognized the wine and chose one of the two. However, it remains unclear how flexibly the AI can provide such answers. The price for Ballie and whether the round robot will also come to Europe after its market launch in South Korea and the USA is still unclear.
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