Home robots and smart refrigerators: Qualcomm talks about the future of the smart home

Qualcomm spoke at CES 2025 about how it sees the next generation of smart home technology in the age of artificial intelligence. Home chatbots, intelligent media systems, robots and smart refrigerators will be of great help. All this may be possible thanks to the powerful Qualcomm QCS8550 chip.

Image source: Qualcomm

With the development of solutions in the field of smart home, the goals of this technology do not change – it is saving time, reducing labor costs, protecting safety, health and entertainment opportunities. Qualcomm aims to make a contribution to this area by offering a chip designed for the smart home with high performance, low power consumption and support for advanced communication technologies. The most promising format for artificial intelligence systems in a smart home seems to be neural networks that can be launched locally—when data is not transferred to the cloud infrastructure, there is no threat of data leakage.

Qualcomm, which has an IoT Solutions Framework for the Internet of Things, has prepared new tools that will be useful in smart home platforms:

• Chatbot with AI for household appliances;
• Optimization of interactive multimedia systems with AI;
• Home robots.

The company presented all these solutions at CES 2025. This year, according to Qualcomm, a new era in the development of the smart home begins – devices will receive powerful processors capable of independently solving complex problems using AI, not limited to simply connecting to a home network. The refrigerator, TV and home robot must learn to communicate with the user. To do this, Qualcomm developed an AI chatbot that can participate in interactive conversations in real time – its responses are generated by a large language model. Unlike smart speakers that are already widely used, this chatbot can be integrated into a wide range of home devices. Qualcomm developed a prototype of such a system together with Thundercomm: the chatbot uses a system on a QCS8550 chip with the ability to locally run AI, process data from cameras and other multimedia components.

A smart refrigerator with a built-in computer vision system finds out what products are available and offers recipes for preparing dishes from them. Or it creates a shopping list, orders groceries from the store and alerts the owner to pick them up on the way home.

The TV becomes the central node – it is controlled using natural speech commands, which are used to switch channels, configure and control smart home devices. A smart TV will offer a program for spontaneous viewing with friends, help with real-time translation, recommend a movie to suit your mood, or plan a family trip. All these features are available with the same QCS8550 chip: it provides voice recognition, multimodal large language model, computer vision functions for recognizing objects, people, gestures and faces; The chip will also cope with background noise suppression using AI. Distance learning and telemedicine functions also promise to be in demand.

The Qualcomm QCS8550 chip can also act as a processor for a home humanoid robot—the company also showed it at the exhibition. The robot embodies the maximum capabilities for modern smart home systems, combining the functions of a chatbot and Qualcomm’s developments in the field of robotic platforms. It responds to voice requests and maintains conversations in natural speech format, and a computer vision system helps it distinguish between a bottle of water and a can of soda. The robot has a universal purpose – it interacts with humans and other objects in real time, and also performs tasks in complex environments.