LG is doubling down on its robotics game, and this time it’s bringing its smart home vision along for the ride.
The Korean giant has announced that it has snagged a majority stake in Bear Robotics, a Silicon Valley startup best known for its AI-driven service robots (pictured above) that have already charmed their way into restaurants and hotels across the US, South Korea, and Japan.
LG actually took a 21% stake in Bear Robotics last year but has now added a further 30%, giving it majority control.
This isn’t LG’s first robotic rodeo. Fans of futuristic appliances might remember LG’s CLOi robots, which arrived back in 2018 to much fanfare, but haven’t really set the world alight.
This time around, LG seems to be taking a more focused approach, aiming to blend robotics seamlessly into its smart home ecosystem.
Powering this robo-revolution will be a Self-driving AI Home Hub, codenamed Q9. Think of it as a robotic butler, therapist, and tech guru rolled into one… and it’s set to actually be available this year.
LG tells us that the Q9 uses autonomous navigation, voice and image recognition, and obstacle-busting tech to roam your house.
More than just a fancy vacuum on steroids – as looks to be the case with SwitchBot’s wacky K20+ Pro, which just went live at CES – the Q9 will into LG’s broader smart home ecosystem, which is now powered, of course, by the excellent Athom Homey platform.
In another acquisition that signals LG’s intent for smart home automation domination, it snapped up Dutch hub specialist Athom last year, and has already signalled how its tech will blend with the existing ThinQ platform.
But the Q9 is set to be more than a Zigbee and Z-Wave hub on wheels. LG informs us it will seamlessly control your connected smart home devices.
So you’ll be able to ask your robot to lower the smart blinds, preheat your connected oven, or cue up your favorite playlist, all while it cheerfully dodges your dog and avoids tripping over on the carpet.
It talks, too, thanks to Microsoft’s cutting-edge synthesis-driven voice recognition.
If you’re wondering why exactly your smart home hub needs to follow you around the house then it all starts to make sense when you look into how LG sees the Q9 and robotics it general progressing.
Its “Affectionate Intelligence” tech might sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it’s the driving force behind its vision; where robots not only handle your chores but also look out for your well-being and integrate with home appliances based on household members behaviors.
Like Samsung, with its SmartThings home AI plan, it’s all part of getting us to the Holy Grail of the Ambient smart home, where technology blends into the background, anticipating your needs and responding to your presence without explicit commands.
LG will also be opening up the Q9, with an SDK available for devs to create use-cases for the robot.
This acquisition isn’t just about improving home robots, though. LG plans to create an integrated robotics platform that spans commercial, industrial, and home applications. Think restaurants staffed with AI waiters, to factories using autonomous articulated robots.