South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. is accelerating its development of autonomous robots, with its personal AI robot, Ballie, set to launch simultaneously in Korea and the United States this summer.

According to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on Monday local time, Samsung Electronics has filed two patent applications, with one pertaining to how a robot detects and uses elevators while the other involves how an artificial intelligence (AI) robot can predict future outcomes and make optimal decisions.

Both patents are closely tied to enhancing the autonomous capabilities of AI robots.

The first patent, titled “Robot using elevator and its control method,” covers a technology that enables a robot to identify elevator status - such as stopping or door opening - using only Wi-Fi signals without relying on complex camera systems or server connections.

Samsung explained that this technology allows robots to prepare for boarding or disembarking the elevator just as it stops, enabling autonomous vertical movement in smart buildings such as hotels, hospitals, shopping malls, and public facilities.

This technology is also more cost-effective than vision-based recognition systems, increasing its commercial potential.

Samsung and Seoul National University’s Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation co-filed the second patent. Titled “AI device and method for selecting the most appropriate action based on situation,” this technology enables AI robots to predict future outcomes and choose the most suitable action.

It is particularly characterized by plotting the outcome of an action as multiple Gaussian curves rather than a single number and making judgments based on them. A Gaussian is a bell-shaped curve symmetrically centered around a mean value, which is a statistical distribution that probabilistically describes how closely data clusters around a value.

This approach allows the AI to make decisions that account for uncertainty. If one path has an average score of 8 but a risk of scoring 0 while another has a stable average of 7, for example, the robot would choose the more stable path. This methodology could be applied in pathfinding and speed control for AI robots.

Samsung’s push into robotics comes amid its rapid market expansion. According to Grand View Research, the global service robotics market is expected to grow from $59.3 billion in 2025 to $105.2 billion by 2030, a 77 percent increase.

Robots also contribute to productivity gains via industrial automation, and Samsung has made broad investments in robotics in this area.

It launched its first in-house robotics commercialization task force in 2021 as well as incorporating humanoid robotics company Rainbow Robotics Inc. as a subsidiary and founding the Future Robot Initiative, led by Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST) Professor Emeritus Oh Jun-ho, at the end of 2024.

Samsung’s robotics research and development (R&D) personnel currently operate under the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and collaborate with Samsung Research’s robotics team. The company’s broader vision includes integrating robots into its Galaxy ecosystem, gaining early market leadership in personal robotics, and enhancing productivity with industrial robots.

The company stated its intention to deploy Rainbow Robotics’ collaborative robots, dual-arm robots, and autonomous mobile robots to automate tasks in manufacturing and logistics sites at the end of 2024. These robots will use AI algorithms to learn from real-time operational data and environmental variables to significantly improve performance.

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