What CES 2024 told us about the home robot

Few technical demonstrations can match the spectacle of robotics. Even as this field becomes increasingly prevalent in a wide range of industrial workplaces, mechatronics that does impressive things will never cease to amaze. For many, the mere presence of a robot is shorthand for the future, and for large electronics companies, it is a quick and easy way to let shareholders and customers know that your company is still innovating.

Whether or not those robots actually lead to salable products is almost beside the point. As long as there are other real products hitting the market in the coming months, those futuristic demos may disappear for everyone. Remember how the Samsung robot chef “debuted” at CES 2020? It was about a month before COVID engulfed the world, so probably not.

But he did what he needed to and, as far as we know, he disappeared. At least the “return” of Ballie showed that Samsung has not lost interest in the home robot. The spherical home-patrolling robot, which now contains a projector, is, at the very least, a more realistic vision of home robots in the near term. While I certainly wouldn't bet a lot of money on it ever hitting the market here, Korea, or anywhere else, Ballie is a perfectly achievable goal.

Whether it is a good goal is another question entirely. I firmly believe that the home robot has a life beyond Roomba. So why, after more than 20 years, do we have little more to show for it than a bunch of robot vacuum cleaners? It's one of those simple questions with deceptively complex answers. Functionality is an important piece. Most robots in this world have only one purpose. They are designed to do a specific thing over and over again until they can't do it anymore.

After years of banging our collective heads against the wall, iRobot turned a profit with the first Roomba in late 2002. It was such a good idea that no one has surpassed it since. Instead, conservatively, tens of millions of dollars are going into R&D at countless companies aimed at building a better robot vacuum. And yes, today's Roombas are big improvements over their ancestors. They are smarter, have a better sense of space, figured out how to mop, and most importantly, won't leave traces of animal droppings on your carpet.

Security has long been considered a second killer app for the home. The idea makes a lot of sense at first glance. Why settle for a Ring Cam when you can get a Ring Cam with wheels? (Admittedly, there are many good reasons for this, but that is beside the point.) That was the main selling point behind Amazon's Astro. The fact that the robot has not been a huge success is largely due to limited functionality combined with a prohibitive price. It's a combination that Ballie will surely suffer from if it ever hits the market.

Unfortunately, I was only able to attend two meetings at this year's CES due to illness. However, one turns out to be very relevant to this specific conversation. Matic is, for most purposes, another robot vacuum cleaner looking to make a name for itself in a crowded space. The reason we covered the company's launch in November and why I agreed to meet with them this week is a combination of their unique approach to the category, plus the pedigree of their founders and financial backing from knowledgeable sources.

What really stood out to me during our conversation is that the company has effectively built a home robotics platform that appears to be pretty good at vacuuming and mopping. I've been thinking of it a bit like Nvidia's Nova Carter mobile benchmark robot. In the process of cleaning the house, you will increasingly improve your navigation by using the onboard vision system. If Matic or someone else masters the domestic equivalent of level 5 autonomy, they will have an excellent foundation for additional features.

But what exactly will be the miraculous solution? The smart money is on another task that people hate doing, but the current factory still has too many limitations. An affordable and robust mobile clamp is another one of those surprisingly complex questions that many people have been working on for a long time. But as with the world of autonomous mobile warehouse robotics, it's easy to imagine how attaching a gripper to one opens up a new world of functionality.

You probably want that robot to reach high places and climb stairs. You can start with a drone dock, which addresses the mobility question well, but payloads, and therefore functionality, are still very limited if you don't want something the size of a Honda Civic floating around your house.

So naturally, we end up where we often end up these days. You start by joining the arms, then bring the legs. Suddenly you're looking at something that looks a lot more like you. This is largely why many robotics simply can't leave humanoids. Even more than factories and warehouses, our homes are built for ourselves, so it suggests that we would build something that looks like us to navigate those spaces.

Of course, no one is ready yet to have a serious conversation about humanoids in the home. There have been plenty of non-serious ones, of course, but no one expects a general-purpose humanoid home robot to be commercially available this year. Again, there are several reasons. The first and most obvious is the price. Entrepreneurship still makes much more sense in the short term. Corporations have a lot of money and will spend a lot if they think it will save them in the end. The demand for industrial automation has also been demonstrated time and time again.

Warehouses are also generally easier to navigate than houses. After all, they are much more structured and uniform. Furthermore, each of these robots will enter the labor market with a single job. They will do it repetitively until they perfect it and then maybe learn another job. However, in most cases, in most factories and warehouses, there are many repetitive jobs going on around the clock to keep these systems busy for a long time. After the Roomba, consumers will demand home robots that can do more.

Image credits: Robotic Intuition

The other big question in all this is generative ai. It was prevalent at CES to the point of almost losing all meaning, and there are days when I'm mad at myself for adding to that chorus. But generative ai will have a profound impact on robotics, period. There are many different spaces, but at least two (learning and natural language) lead to eventual general-purpose systems. The bad news, however, is that optimistic projections place that roadmap at about five years, at least.

This was a big year for robotics at CES. At the same time, it's frustrating that we don't feel any closer to the ubiquitous home robots than we did at the same time last year. That does not mean that the short-term roadmap is free of interesting plays. To find something more realistic than a chicken in every pot and two Teslabots in every garage, we would have to examine the technology space of the era. The AARP accelerator (which along with Samsung was the other meeting I was able to take this year) is doing a good job of highlighting this category.

Japan invariably comes up in every conversation about this category, because the country has been ahead of the rest of the world due to its aging population. Robots are a big part of that. So far, they appear to be less prevalent in the broader tech category, but there's plenty of room to navigate. Most of these devices aim to find ways for seniors to continue living independently. It's easy to see the role that robots can (and will) play.

Over the past few years, we have featured the Labrador Assist Cart System. This year, we saw the return of the ElliQ desktop robotic assistant. If I were looking for a way to introduce robots into the home right now, this is exactly the demographic I would target. And I don't want to be too rude about it, but Baby Boomers currently control 70% of the country's disposable income. Not a bad place to start, if you ask me.