The Consumer Electronics Show is often about the strangest new tech in the pipeline and there’s no reason to expect CES 2024 to be any different. Usually, we’re allowed to wait until the event starts before the situation gets odd but LG’s got a talent for jumping the gun.
What we hope is the strangest product to issue from the South Korean company in 2024 has already been revealed, along with a preview of everything else folks can expect from LG’s CES 2024 presentation. There are TVs and monitors, some rather interesting audio kit, and then there’s this — LG’s smart home AI Agent.
Invading CES 2024
LG’s weirdest gadget for a while is just begging for a cutesy name to distract you from the fact that it’s a bipedal, AI-powered robot designed to follow you around your home. It’s positioned as a smart home gadget along the lines of Amazon’s Alexa devices but with the power of motion. It’s also packed with sensors, allowing it to perform tasks that account for environmental factors like humidity, air quality, and temperature.
Users will be able to control their smart home gear — LG has an impressive amount of it — via the robot’s voice interface but it can also monitor and offer assistance like “…providing transportation details, weather updates, personal schedules, or reminders to take medications.” It does this while meeting owners at the door, analysing emotions via a combination of voice and facial recognition, and generally being a little creepy. Oh, and it’ll also watch out for your pets, provided you can get Ginger and Rover accustomed to the little trundling critter’s presence in their space.
You’ll notice we used the word ‘bipedal’ up there but this thing, obviously, features a pair of wheels and some sort of gyroscopic balancing system. Those legs also offer articulation, allowing LG’s AI agent to communicate non-verbally by adjusting its legs. That seems to fulfil the requirement for ‘bipedal’, apparently. It’s built on chip-maker Qualcomm’s Robotics RB5 Platform, which is the thing that allows for its AI capabilities in addition to its dog-like nature.
LG will unveil more of its functions and (hopefully) its not-planning-the-downfall-of-humanity official name at CES 2024, set to take place from 9 to 12 January. That’s next week. Stick around, we’ll have the info you need from the event as it happens.
