Remember that cute little robotic ball Samsung teased back at CES 2020? After five years of development (or perhaps rolling around in Samsung’s R&D labs), Ballie is finally making its consumer debut this summer in the US and South Korea. What started as a tennis ball-sized concept has grown to volleyball proportions—kind of like how the promises about its capabilities have expanded with each passing year. Designer: Samsung The journey from concept to consumer product hasn’t been a straight line for this spherical sidekick, but Samsung seems confident they’ve finally perfected their rolling companion. In its latest evolution, Samsung just announced a partnership with Google Cloud to integrate Google’s Gemini AI into Ballie. This means your expensive rolling robot will now have the same AI that’s already in your phone and available on your computer for free. Progress! Though to be fair, combining Google’s AI prowess with Samsung’s hardware expertise could potentially create something greater than the sum of its parts. A Smart Speaker That Chases You Around What truly separates Ballie from the seventeen smart speakers you’ve already scattered around your home? It moves. While your Echo Dot sits sadly collecting dust on your kitchen counter, Ballie actively pursues you throughout your living space like an eager puppy—or a particularly friendly surveillance device, depending on your perspective. “But Vincent,” you might ask, “couldn’t I just carry my phone with me instead?” Sure, but where’s the fun in that? Why use the perfectly functional device already in your pocket when you could have a volleyball-sized robot following you to the bathroom? The robot’s multimodal AI capabilities allow it to process various forms of input simultaneously—voice, visual data from its cameras, and other audio cues. In theory, this creates a more comprehensive understanding of your needs and environment. In practice, it means Ballie will know exactly what you look like in your pajamas and precisely how many times you’ve asked it to play “Despacito” (judgment included at no extra charge). Ballie’s most distinctive feature is its projection capability, which genuinely separates it from other smart home devices. This clever sphere can project interfaces onto floors, walls, and other surfaces, turning any flat area in your home into a potential display. Need to check your calendar while getting dressed? Ballie can project it onto your bedroom wall. Want everyone to see your private messages? Ballie’s got you covered there too! Nothing says “cutting-edge technology” like turning your entire home into one giant, hard-to-read screen. Yet the ability to create interfaces anywhere without installing permanent displays could be genuinely useful in many scenarios. Imagine having your recipe projected onto the kitchen counter while cooking, or your workout routine displayed on the floor during exercise. The possibilities are intriguing, even if the practicality remains questionable. Your Home’s Rolling Command Center (That You Definitely Need) Beyond mobility and projection tricks, Ballie serves as yet another smart home controller in an already crowded market. The robot can manage connected devices throughout your living space—adjusting thermostats, controlling lighting, and managing entertainment systems. You know, all those things your phone, smart speakers, smartwatch, smart TV remote, and smart light switches already do, but with the added excitement of having to locate a rolling ball first. According to Samsung, Ballie can offer personalized health and lifestyle recommendations based on your patterns and preferences. Just what everyone wants—another device telling you to get off the couch or suggesting that maybe, just maybe, wearing sweatpants for the seventh day in a row isn’t your best fashion choice. The robot can even provide styling recommendations, potentially using its visual recognition capabilities to judge your outfit choices with the cold, unfeeling precision only an AI can deliver. Though to be fair, if it can actually help coordinate outfits or remind you about important medications, that could be genuinely valuable for some users. But do we really need a rolling robot to tell us that navy blue and black don’t match? Your mirror has been doing that job for free for years. Pet owners might find particular value in Ballie’s monitoring capabilities, which go beyond what stationary cameras can offer. When you’re away from home, this robotic companion can keep an eye on your furry friends, alerting you to unusual behavior like your cat knocking things off shelves—something you definitely couldn’t see with the seventeen security cameras you already have installed. Your pets will surely appreciate having a strange rolling object chasing them around the house while you’re gone. Or maybe they’ll destroy it within the first week. Either way, entertainment value! I’m personally looking forward to the inevitable YouTube compilation videos of cats riding Ballies across hardwood floors. The integration with Google’s Gemini AI should theoretically make Ballie’s interactions more natural and intuitive. Rather than the stilted command-response pattern of most smart assistants, Ballie aims to provide flowing conversations that feel more like talking to a helpful companion. Whether this will work as advertised remains to be seen, but the potential is certainly there for a more satisfying user experience than we’ve had with previous generations of AI assistants. Just don’t expect it to pass the Turing test anytime soon. From Tennis Ball to Volleyball: A Growth Story Samsung’s journey with Ballie illustrates the challenges of bringing truly innovative consumer robotics to market—or perhaps just how long it takes to convince consumers they need another smart device. First unveiled in 2020, the robot captured imaginations but required extensive refinement before Samsung felt confident bringing it to consumers. The version shown at CES 2024 represented a significant evolution from the original concept, with enhanced capabilities and a more refined design. This extended development period suggests Samsung is taking the product seriously rather than rushing it to market half-baked. Five years is a long time in tech development cycles—either they’re perfectionists or they kept running into walls. Literally. The physical growth from tennis ball to volleyball size wasn’t just about aesthetics—it reflects the practical realities of packing more technology into a mobile device. A larger form factor allows for better batteries, more sophisticated sensors, and improved projection capabilities. It also means more surface area for your cat to attack and more weight to run over your toes at 3 AM when you’re stumbling to the bathroom. Engineering a device that can move reliably around a home environment while carrying all the necessary tech is no small feat. Just ask anyone who’s watched a robot vacuum repeatedly ram itself into the same table leg for twenty minutes. The partnership with Google Cloud for Gemini AI integration shows Samsung recognizes the need for powerful AI capabilities to make Ballie truly useful—or at least to justify whatever eye-watering price tag they’ll announce closer to launch. By combining their proprietary language models with Google’s Gemini, Samsung can offer more sophisticated natural language processing than would be possible alone. This collaboration may also help Ballie integrate more seamlessly with other Google services, creating an ecosystem so comprehensive you’ll never escape tech company surveillance again! The privacy implications alone should make for interesting conversations. “Hey Ballie, are you recording this?” “No, Vincent, I would never do that… by the way, have you considered those hemorrhoid creams you were googling yesterday?” Do You Actually Need This Rolling Robot? Let’s be honest for a moment. Ballie represents an interesting experiment in home robotics, bringing mobility to a category that has been largely stationary. Its friendly, non-threatening design delivers functionality without venturing into uncanny valley territory. But do you need it? Probably not. Most of us have survived just fine without a rolling AI ball following us around our homes. Will you want it? Almost certainly, if you’re the type of person who reads Gear Culture articles and has a weakness for gadgets with personality. There’s an undeniable appeal to having your own little robot companion, even if its practical benefits are questionable at best. It’s basically a pet that doesn’t poop and might actually do something useful occasionally. Ballie exists in the perfect sweet spot of consumer technology—not quite essential enough to be a necessity but novel enough to be irresistible to tech enthusiasts. It solves problems you didn’t know you had with solutions you didn’t know you wanted. The ability to have your AI assistant physically follow you around might be genuinely useful in specific scenarios, or it might just be another expensive gadget that ends up collecting dust after the novelty wears off. Your mileage will vary depending on how you actually live in your home and how tolerant you are of a volleyball with cameras watching you fold laundry in your underwear. What remains to be seen is how well Ballie will handle the unpredictable chaos of real-world homes. Can it navigate around furniture obstacles without getting stuck? Will it survive encounters with curious pets and small children? Can it handle varied lighting conditions that might affect its projection capabilities? The true test will come when this volleyball-sized companion faces the messy reality of actual family life rather than the perfectly staged environments of product demonstrations. I’m particularly interested in how it handles stairs. Does it just sadly gaze up at them like my robot vacuum, or will it develop a concerning tendency to throw itself down them dramatically? Samsung’s five years of development suggest they’ve been working diligently to ensure Ballie can handle these real-world challenges. The extended gestation period indicates they’re taking the product seriously and addressing potential issues before release. Whether that translates to a reliable, useful device remains to be seen, but the commitment is encouraging. The Rolling Future Whether Ballie becomes a household staple or remains a fascinating experiment, it’s rolling us toward a future where our homes feel more responsive, more integrated, and perhaps even a little more alive. There’s something appealing about technology that can physically respond to our needs rather than just sitting passively waiting for commands. Of course, there’s also something mildly dystopian about having an AI-powered camera on wheels following you around your home, constantly watching and listening. The privacy implications alone deserve serious consideration before inviting this rolling companion into your life. Samsung and Google will need to be transparent about how data is collected, processed, and protected if they want consumers to trust Ballie with intimate access to their homes and daily routines. This summer, we’ll finally discover if this adorable rolling robot can live up to its considerable promise or if it’s just another expensive tech toy destined for the drawer of forgotten gadgets. Either way, Ballie represents an interesting step in the evolution of home robotics—bringing movement to a category that has been largely stationary and personality to systems that have often felt mechanical. And if nothing else, it’ll give your cat something new to be terrified of. That alone might be worth the price of admission. Just don’t be surprised when you find yourself apologizing to a ball after accidentally kicking it. We humans have a funny way of anthropomorphizing anything with even a hint of personality. Before you know it, you’ll be naming it, talking to it when no one else is around, and feeling guilty when you leave it alone for too long. Ballie might not be the companion we need, but it might just be the weird little robot friend we secretly wanted all along.The post Samsung Ballie Is Finally Real—And Yes, It’s Following You This Summer first appeared on Yanko Design.