In an era when everywhere you turn another tech company is making a smart home assistant, LG has its own solution, and it comes in the form of a friendly looking little robot.
The Hub Robot, as it's called, is a white blob with two blinking blue eyes that doubles as a smart home gateway and personal assistant. LG already announced it was bringing the Hub Robot to CES 2017, but today was the first time we laid eyes on it.
In addition to wheeling around after you, the Hub Robot can perform tasks like preheat your oven, initiate the robot vacuum (another LG robotic innovation), fill you in on commute times, tell you the weather and play music.
None of these tasks are ground-breaking or all that necessary, though they could be cool party tricks to pull out every so often.
LG didn't announce pricing or a release date for the Hub Robot, so we don't know when it will start scooting around after you. With the likes of Amazon Echo and Google Home costing less than $200, LG will need to keep the Hub Robot inexpensive if it has any hope of competing.
Robot wars
LG's robot ambitions don't end there as tech giant also unveiled a Lawn Mower Robot (self-explanatory) and Airbot, a larger version of Hub Robot designed to clean up and escort people around airports.
Again, no formal release date or price were mentioned for these bots either, but the machines point to LG putting a renewed focus on robots as well as artificial intelligence to lend a hand in our daily lives.
The LG G5-maker outlined its advanced AI plans for appliances ahead of CES, and today talked up its DeepThinQ tech based on learning user habits as well as voice and image recognition to deliver more intelligent personalization to home goods.
A team-up with Amazon also brings the Alexa personal voice assistant to LG appliances, namely a refrigerator that lets you place orders for items when you've run low. The future!
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