LAS VEGAS — LG Electronics has been experimenting with robots that guide visitors through Incheon Airport in Seoul, but they have bigger ambitions for work robots that they showed off at CES today.
The electronics maker showed off three new work robots under their CLOi robot brand. Examples included a serving robot, porter robot and shopping cart robot.
There was also a small, cute CLOi robot that was helping David VanderWaal, vice president of marketing for LG Electronics, to control a washing machine and pull up a recipe from a smart refrigerator. After a couple initial responses, the robot got a major case of stage fright and stopped responding, with VanderWall joking that the robot might be mad at him.
The CLOi serving robot is designed to deliver food and beverages to hotel and airport lounge guests, though in a decidedly non-CES moment, the demo robot served up a printed newspaper.
The CLOi porter robot is able to transport luggage to a visitor’s hotel room, along with being able to facilitate automated check-in and check-out services.
The CLOi shopping cart robot has a built in bar code scanner, along with capabilities to route consumers through a store efficiently.
Demonstrations of the capabilities of these robots were rudimentary at best, simply having the robots turn around or open a tray, meaning we are likely years away from seeing something like this widely deployed.
