Samsung’s Ballie robot ball thing is finally going on sale, has Google Gemini on board

Love or loathe Samsung, their little Ballie robot previewed way back in 2020 is damn cute.

Samsung’s adorable rolling robot, Ballie, is finally hitting the market this summer in the US and Korea.

The above video is from early 2024, before the launch of Google Gemini, which Samsung has now integrated pretty heavily into its latest S25 phones and Galaxy Book laptops.

Now, with the announcement of Ballie going on sale, I guess it’s no surprise that it’ll also have Gemini built in.

Here’s a short new vid:

Samsung says Ballie will have multimodal capabilities, allowing it to process voice, audio, and visual data.

In other words, Samsung wants it to be your robot bestie and personal assistant, following you around the house to help with whatever digital advice and guidance it can offer.

Alas, it can’t make you a sandwich, but maybe that’ll come with the next one…

Annoyingly, today’s announcement says nothing about any plans to broaden its availability to regions other than the US and Korea, so I guess I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed!