Patent Teases Google's Potential Entry Into Home Robot Market

Google could be readying itself for the home robot market. According to a new patent, the tech giant has been working on a bot that moves autonomously throughout the home and can chat with family members and respond to queries. It might even be able to help with physical tasks. 
The patent, spotted Monday by MSPowerUser, has been in the works since at least November 2021 and was filed this month. In it, Google notes that while many smart home devices are good at handling one particular type of task (vacuuming, filming security footage, switching the lights on and off, and so on), consumers lack a device that can tackle multiple kinds of duties—or use those specialized devices themselves. The company’s solution is to create a “robotic home device” that can not only field various requests, but leverage existing smart home devices on a local network to help manage a household. 
Within the patent are a handful of illustrations that help to convey the robot’s more basic abilities. In one pair of drawings, the robot tells a person that they received a text message from someone named Julian. When the person responds that they don’t know where their phone is, the robot offers to show them where they left the device. The second drawing depicts the robot leading the human to their kitchen, where the phone sits on the counter. The patent says the robot could have otherwise read the text aloud to the person, had they not been able to disengage from their previous task.
Another set of drawings shows the robot asking a child if he’s cleaned his room. Afterward, the robot reports to the child’s guardian that the room “looks clean,” but little Jimmy is still working on it.
Based on the illustrations and Google’s writings, the robot appears to locomote using a pair of tank-like treads. The bot’s upper surface features two jointed components: The rear is the bot’s “head,” which incorporates two “eyes” (likely cameras or other sensors) on a swiveling neck, while the front is an arm with a pincer-like grabber. The grabber suggests that the bot might be capable of bringing items to people within the household, though the items would probably have to be fairly low to the ground—say, a blanket left on the floor, or a toy handed to the bot by a child.
The idea of a friendly household robot has garnered excitement for decades, but in practice, it’s a tough thing to accomplish. So far, even the tech industry’s most successful catch-all smart home assistants have turned out to be little more than expensive novelties. Still, Google has been toying with practical mobile robots for a while now, and Samsung is preparing to (literally) roll out its own robot this year. Maybe we’re on the cusp of everything Honda’s endearing ASIMO robot was supposed to be.
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