Could Walking Robots Make Household Chores Obsolete?

The AI home of the future sounds like a domestic ideal. The reality, writes Andrew Griffin, might not be quite so blissful

Chores take weeks of our time each year. And already robots that help us out with them - those that automatically clean our floors, for instance - are selling in their millions and likely to keep growing. Yet in our mainstream depictions of how robots are taking over, their impact on the future of domestic labour is barely discussed. Instead we see the lumbering dog-like, militarised creations of Boston Dynamics, or endless speculation about how sex robots are going to destroy human intimacy.

But technology’s impact on our homes is likely to be just as revolutionary, if not quite so deadly or so sexy. Robots have already vastly transformed the way we think about housework and are likely to do so even more dramatically in the years to come. Those changes have already echoed far beyond the home, changing the very way we live.

And so when LG’s AI assistant trundles into the Consumer Electronics Show this week, it is one part of a very big transformation in our homes. The assistant is humble: about the size of a stuffed toy, it can drive around the house on two legs with wheels on their bottom, using its cameras, sensors and other skills to both guard and control the home. (The company didn’t actually give the system a name, referring to it only as ”LG’s smart home AI agent”.)

LG’s new system doesn’t look like a great harbinger of revolution, with its white circular eyes and squat body. But the company certainly wants you to think of it that way. Its announcement said that it would “help free customers from household chores” and “help customers experience a smarter, more enjoyable life at home” – in so doing it’s a move towards what it pitches as the “zero labour home”. The hunched little robot, LG says, is bringing a dream where we are totally free of chores.