Ballie lives: Samsung’s robot assistant is back

Samsung’s Ballie robot made a surprise return after a four-year absence at the company’s CES 2024 press conference.

First announced at CES 2020, Ballie is Samsung's orb-shaped robot that can interact with and intuit information from the various Samsung smart devices in your home. It can also act as a companion to your pets and even a fitness coach.

This time around, Ballie is also a little larger. The unit itself is now closer to a bowling ball than a cricket ball. The wheels on it are also a little protrusive in shape rather than seamlessly integrated with the chassis.

Samsung's vision for Ballie is one where you're mostly instructing it to do things using your voice, though it now also supports text inputs via a chatbot-like app. This new form of interfacing with the robot also comes with a handful of new tricks. 

The biggest one is that Ballie now features a built-in 1080p projector that’s capable of displaying notifications and even projecting images and video content onto nearby surfaces.

No word yet on if or when this larger version of Ballie will make it to the market, but here's hoping this incarnation of Samsung’s robot assistant has more staying power than the last one.