Many of Samsung's rivals are increasingly focusing on building robots for consumers and businesses, LG showed off a handful of such products at CES 2017 last week, but it appears that Samsung has other plans. The company has expressed its interest in building wearable healthcare devices instead of robots that its rivals are focusing on. It's believed that wearable healthcare devices will leverage AI software more effectively and will be more beneficial for the future healthcare market.
Samsung apparently made its decision to focus more on the healthcare devices after judging at CES 2017 that home robot technology is still premature. “The roles of home robots recently introduced by home appliance companies can be realized by adding artificial intelligence (AI) to existing devices such as smartphones, TVs and IoT refrigerators,” said a senior representative of Samsung, adding that “Rather, we believe that health care based on wearable appliances has more future growth potential.”
That doesn't mean Samsung will be leaving the robotics space. The company is working on robots for factory automation but it doesn't seem to have any interest in developing consumer-focused robots at this point in time.