Korean tech giants, Samsung and LG, have ushered in the future of Internet of Things and artificial intelligence technologies by revealing their latest plans and technologies at the Consumer Electronics Show that opens on Thursday in Las Vegas.

Samsung Electronics’ chief gave a sneak peek at the firm’s plan on IoT on the eve of the show, along with the revelation of its Wi-Fi-based home appliances controllable via smartphones. 

“Samsung will achieve the infinite possibility of IoT connectivity to lead the future smart home market,” said Yoon Boo-keun, Samsung Electronics CEO, said a day before the opening ceremony of the CES.

The Korean tech giant said it plans to strengthen the development of IoT products and services in areas from smart homes, smart offices to smart cars beyond smartphones. It will create synergies with the US firms, which include car audio company Harman, artificial intelligence startup Viv Labs and cloud firm Joyent, which it recently acquired.

Samsung plans to unveil a new app connecting home appliances and digital devices via a cloud-based platform. This platform will enable one app to control all the devices within home through artificial intelligence and voice recognition technologies by accumulating and analyzing users’ life style patterns. 

The service connecting Samsung’s major home appliances and TV will first be unveiled this year and it would be expanded into all the devices within a home by 2020, a Samsung official said.

In order to expand the IoT eco-system, the tech firm will form $150 million for Samsung Next Fund to foster global tech startups.

On the day, Samsung unveiled its smart home appliances including a refrigerator, a washing machine and other kitchen appliances, which are all connected through Wi-Fi technology and controllable by users’ smartphones.

Samsung’s arch rival LG Electronics also proposed “Better life with AI” as a vision for this year’s event.

The No. 2 electronics maker in Korea debuted an array of smart home appliances and robots to the world show, featuring big data, cloud and IoT technologies.

“LG promises to provide a better life for our customers with LG’s signature AI technologies,” said Ahn Seung-kwon, chief technology officer of the company. 

“We will expand collaboration with global partners including Amazon and Google, and join the board of the Open Connectivity Foundation in order to increase cooperation on technological standards.”

LG unveiled a smart refrigerator equipped with its original operating system named “Web OS” for the first time. The Web OS has been mostly powered on the firm’s smart TVs.

A 29-inch full-HD LCD touch screen on the upper right door of the refrigerator allows users to look inside of the fridge by knocking the door twice as a light turns on. Users can type in expiration dates of items in the fridge on the screen by using the smart tag feature.

Users can also issue voice commands to the smart refrigerator connected with Amazon’s voice recognizing service Alex to play music, search news, shop groceries and check schedules.

LG also introduced a lineup of home appliances dubbed “Deep ThinQ” based on the deep learning technology. The deep learning air conditioner and robot vacuum cleaner operate on their own by analyzing data accumulated in the cloud regarding users’ ordinary habits and surrounding conditions.

The company showcased a variety of robots including an airport guide robot, lawn mowing robot and Wi-Fi and smart device controlling robot for home.

By Shin Ji-hye and Song Su-hyun 
(shinjh@heraldcorp.com) (song@heraldcorp.com)