LG's home robot wants to be your future butler
LG showed off a cadre of consumer robots today. Its LG Hub is
similar to Amazon’s Alexa, a stationary unit that is controlled by your voice.
In fact, it’s powered by the same software running on Alexa. But it has more
personality, adding an animated face and swiveling to look at whoever it’s
talking to. It looks and feels a lot like the Jibo robot that
was unveiled two years ago.Beyond playing music and looking up the weather, it also acts a
command and control unit for a number of different LG appliances. At its
presentation onstage at CES this morning, LG showed the Hub bot preheating a
connected oven, turning on your robotic vacuum, and controlling your autonomous
lawnmower. There is a large version of the Hub which is your primary point of
interaction, but LG is also selling mini versions of the Hub that, like the
Amazon Dot, can be placed in different room around your house to enable voice
control from anywhere.
The Hub bot is consumer facing, but LG also showed off a larger
version of the same robot that it hopes to deploy in airports and hotels. That
robot can move around, answer questions, and provide directions.LG emphasized that these new units would run cutting-edge AI
that would allow them to learn about their owners and carry on conversations.
“The Hub Robot is designed to respond to consumers using body language, such as
nodding its head when answering simple questions, and is always aware of
activities inside the home, such as when family members leave, come home and go
to bed. And because the Hub Robot is able to distinguish different family
members’ faces with its camera, it can be programmed with a different greeting
for each family member.”
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