Samsung is bringing ambient sensing to SmartThings

Samsung announced today that its connected appliances and smart home devices will soon be able to act as motion and sound sensors for its smart home platform SmartThings. This includes its televisions, Music Frame speaker, Family Hub fridge, and more. The company said the updates are slated for release in 2025 and 2026 but didn’t provide specific timelines.

The move is part of its vision of “AI for All,” using AI to simplify technology in the home. By leveraging sensors in its appliances, Samsung’s new Home AI — an artificial intelligence layer that the company is applying to its connected devices — can gather “insights from everyday life to create personalized experiences to fit your needs, transforming your home into a smarter, more efficient space,” according to a Samsung blog post.

This ambient sensing will use motion and sound sensors in Samsung appliances to suggest automations and experiences based on wellness, security, energy savings, and entertainment. It will enable SmartThings to “recognize you and understand your daily activities like cooking, exercising, sleeping, etc., so your home can create the perfect environment for you,” according to Samsung.

Image: Samsung

While that sounds slightly 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 the 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 motion sensors in a Samsung TV can “detect what kind of exercise you’re doing, guide you on your form, and provide the optimal exercise time for maximum results.” If you sit down 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 “identify your miniature pinscher jumping onto 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 hear the hair dryer and tell the Samsung robot vacuum to come vacuum up the hair you’ve shed.

Presumably, these “experiences” will be ones you can choose to set up in the SmartThings app, and the robot vacuum isn’t just going to come at you as soon as you start drying your hair. Samsung says that all data from the sensors used by Home AI is stored locally on your SmartThings hub and does not go to the cloud.

Samsung didn’t state exactly what type of technology it’s using in its sensors, but from the specific motion detections mentioned, it’s likely to be mmWave radar sensing, which is becoming popular in the smart home in devices from Aqara and Meross. That’s the only sensing technology outside of cameras that’s precise enough to react to specific movements rather than just motion in general.

The Verge has reached out to Samsung to find out which of its TVs and appliances are currently equipped with these ambient sensors. We also asked if third-party sensors connected to SmartThings can work with the new technology or if it’s limited to Samsung devices at launch. We’ll update this post as we get any new information.

Image: Samsung

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 personalization to your Map View.”

You’ll be able to personalize 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 might 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 out an app, they need data about our activities, movements, and preferences. Beyond having a user input everything manually, sensors are the most effective way to get this data. By turning its appliances into sensors, Samsung is adding a big piece of the smart home puzzle to its ecosystem.