Samsung announced today that its connected devices and smart home devices will soon be able to act as motion and sound sensors for its SmartThings smart home platform. This includes its TVs, Music Frame speaker, Family Hub refrigerator and more. The company said the updates are scheduled to be released in 2025 and 2026, but did not provide specific timelines.
The move is part of its vision of “AI for All,” using AI to simplify technology in the home. Using sensors in its devices, Samsung’s new Home Intelligence — a layer of artificial intelligence the company is applying to its connected devices — can gather “information from everyday life to create personalized experiences to tailored to your needs, transforming your home into a smarter, more efficient space,” according to a Samsung blog post.
This ambient sensor will use motion and sound sensors in Samsung devices to suggest automations and experiences based on well-being, security, energy savings and entertainment. It will enable SmartThings to “recognize you and understand your daily activities such as cooking, exercising, sleeping, etc., so that your home can create the perfect environment for you,” according to Samsung.
While this sounds a little creepy, there are certainly benefits to having sensors built into devices to make your home react the way you want it to – the simplest being automating your lighting. The alternative to achieving any real home automation is to stick little white plastic sensors everywhere. Samsung says data from its sensors will be fed to Home AI to create more sophisticated automations that can detect and respond to specific activities.
For example, Samsung says the motion sensors on a Samsung TV can “detect what type of exercise you’re doing, guide you in your form and provide the optimal workout time for maximum results.” If you sit in a chair, SmartThings can automatically turn on the nearby reading lamp and adjust the room to your preferred temperature. Samsung says it can also “detect your miniature pinscher jumping on the couch, activating the air purifier to remove allergens from the air.” And if you’re drying your hair, a device with a speaker, like the Samsung Music Frame, can listen to the hair dryer and tell the Samsung Robot Vacuum to come sweep up your shed hair.
Apparently, these “experiences” will be ones you can choose to set in the SmartThings app, and the robot vacuum won’t just come to you once you start drying your hair. Samsung says all data from the sensors used by Home AI is stored locally in your SmartThings hub and doesn’t go to the cloud.
Samsung didn’t say exactly what kind of technology it’s using in its sensors, but from the specific motion detections mentioned, it’s likely to be the mmWave radar sensor that’s becoming popular in the smart home in devices from Aqara and Meross. This is the only sensor technology outside of cameras that is accurate enough to react to specific movements rather than just movement in general.
threshold has reached out to Samsung to find out which of its TVs and devices are currently equipped with these ambient sensors. We also asked if third-party sensors connected to SmartThings could work with the new technology or if it’s limited to Samsung devices at first. We will update this post as we receive any new information.
Samsung also announced updates to its Map View feature, a layout view of your home that gives you a visual interface to interact with connected devices from your phone, computer and TV. Map View will get a generative AI upgrade that Samsung says will give it “a deeper understanding of your home’s unique layout and environment, adding more customization to Map View.”
You’ll be able to customize your map by adding photos of your furniture and other objects, and Samsung says this will help the system respond to your presence more accurately. “For example, the system can adjust your lighting or temperature settings based on your proximity to certain areas or objects.”
All of these updates address a major pain point of the smart home – context. If we want our homes to respond to us without the need for voice commands or pulling up an app, they need data about our activities, movements and preferences. Beyond having the user input everything manually, sensors are the most effective way to get this data. By turning its devices into sensors, Samsung is adding a big piece of the smart home puzzle to its ecosystem.