We were expecting robots, smart home, and AI to be big at the IFA 2024 trade show… and LG has delivered by combining all three into one new product that's going to be released in the first half of 2025 in South Korea.
It's an adorable little two-wheeled bot with a carry handle and big set of eyes, which has been given the inexplicably business-minded name of 'LG Self-Driving AI Home Hub'. Not really the cutesy title you expect for something like this, but given that you summon it by saying the word "Hi LG", I might call mine 'Eljy'.
To be fair, the official name is very descriptive for what it offers. It acts as a kind of AI smart speaker that you can give commands to, and with LG's new AI platform (which does have a cool name: FURON) behind it, it apparently has multiple LLMs to draw understanding from, and uses ChatGPT 4-o to be able to understand and communicate naturally, even to weirder requests.
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It also has a fun party trick where you can draw something in a companion app on a tablet, 'send' the picture to the robot, and generative AI will create an original story that follows the elements of the picture.
You can call out to summon the robot over to you, and it'll come to where you are and announce itself charmingly (at least, it was charming in a trade-show demo, maybe you'll want to turn it off in real life). I saw it navigating a very empty environment, so I don't know how good its object avoidance is, but it seems to have a good range of sensors on the front.
And as I mentioned, it's a smart home hub, and can control all kinds of smart home tech. LG recently acquired a smart home control open platform that works with tons of brands, and with Matter support on board, it should be very flexible.
You can ask it to make changes to your smart home controls, but it can also respond contextually – one option LG highlighted is that you can task the robot to stay with your kids as they roam the house, and it will follow them around, and then when the clock hits 'time to get ready for bed' it can dim the lights in the room they're in.
Obviously, its little wheels can't take it up stairs, but it has a carry handle for that. I'll also say that it wasn't the smoothest mover – it seemed a little stuttery, and wasn't too sure which way to face when an LG demo-er asked it to come to him, but that might be just an issue with having a big group of people staring at it too. All of this might be improved by the time it launches, of course.
What's more important is the way it moves when it's talking to you. It wobbles sideways and forwards when it gets more enthusiastic, and can rotate its handle to emphasize 'emotions' too – like a combination of a fun enthusiastic aunt and a cat.
That's while it's talking in a pretty natural voice – though not too natural. I think it strikes a nice balance between friendly and robotic.
I can imagine myself wanting one of these to watch the house while I'm gone. LG had a larger demo of its vision of a smart home powered by generative AI assistants, where something like this robot could roam the house and make changes to your heating or cooling system depending on the temperature and humidity in each room.
It could be great to have it as a kind of video guard dog, as many similar home robots have angled themselves, responding to sounds when it knows I'm out. Maybe it can pretend to be armed with a taser to ward of intruders. Or maybe it'll tell them a cute story and lull them into a false sense of security while it automatically calls the police. We'll see!
Of course, LG hasn't announced a price yet, so who knows whether it'll feel remotely desirable once we know that. But it'll be damn charming either way.
