In short: Samsung has updated SmartThings with family care features that use connected appliances and wearables to monitor elderly relatives remotely, including fall detection via a robotic vacuum camera, cognitive decline screening via behavioral pattern analysis, environmental safety alerts and activity tracking. The update also adds Galaxy AI-powered routine creation, millimeter-wave environmental scanning with native processing, and Matter camera support on the 500 million-user SmartThings platform.
Samsung has updated SmartThings with a suite of family care features that use an ecosystem of connected devices to track elderly relatives, detect falls, track cognitive decline and alert caregivers when something looks amiss. The update turns Samsung’s smart home platform into something closer to a remote monitoring system, using data already collected by refrigerators, air conditioners, robot vacuums and wearable devices to get an idea of whether someone is safe at home.
The features roll out alongside Samsung’s broader SmartThings strategy for 2026, which includes Galaxy AI-powered routine creation, environmental exploration via millimeter-wave radar, Matter camera support and power management tools. But family care capabilities are the most important addition, as they transform the smart home into a health and safety infrastructure rather than a convenience product.
What are the maintenance features?
Care on Call displays a pop-up showing their first activity of the day, most recent activity, step count and local weather before a phone call with a monitored family member. It’s a simple feature, but it gives the caregiver immediate context before the conversation: did they get out of bed? Did they move? Data comes from devices connected to SmartThings and Galaxy wearables.
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Reassurance Patrol uses Samsung’s 2026 Bespoke AI Steam Ultra robotic vacuum as a mobile monitoring platform. The vacuum sends an alert if no activity is detected in the home within a set period of time. Its built-in camera can detect a person lying on the ground, and it supports two-way talk through a speaker and microphone, allowing a family member to check in remotely. The vacuum can be remotely activated, turning the cleaning unit into the required control and communication device.
Care Insight analyzes temperature and humidity from connected appliances, air conditioners, purifiers and humidifiers, and alerts caregivers when environmental conditions deviate from safe limits. It also tracks patterns in connected device usage and activity levels, noting significant changes compared to the previous week. A sudden drop in refrigerator doors or a change in daily movement patterns may indicate a health problem before an emergency.
The most promising feature is the detection of cognitive decline. Samsung says SmartThings can analyze lifestyle patterns with mobile and wearable devices, tracking speech, typing, walking, sleep and gait to identify early signs of cognitive impairment. When changes are detected, alerts are sent to designated caregivers. This feature is based on longitudinal behavioral data that clinical researchers have long identified as potential predictors of dementia-like conditions, but outside controlled studies are difficult to collect.
A layer that senses the environment
At the heart of the maintenance features is Samsung’s environmental sensing technology, which uses millimeter-wave radar in conjunction with sound sensors built into Samsung TVs, refrigerators and other devices. The system can detect different activities, distinguishing whether someone is exercising, sleeping, working at a desk, or simply moving around a room, often without the use of cameras.
Samsung says that all sensor data is processed and stored locally in the SmartThings hub rather than in the cloud, a privacy architecture that addresses the most obvious objection to placing radar sensors in someone’s living room. The local processing approach means the system can build a detailed picture of household activity patterns without transmitting that data to Samsung’s servers, although the care alert functions necessarily involve sharing some information with designated family members.
Map View, SmartThings’ spatial interface, is also enhanced with generative AI. Users can take pictures of their rooms to create more accurate floor plans, and the system uses furniture location data along with environmental studies to understand context: whether someone is in bed, at a table or on the floor.
Platform game
Samsung’s advantage in this category is scale. SmartThings has more than 500 million users, and Samsung’s ecosystem of devices means that the hardware infrastructure required by many household maintenance features is already in place. Taken together, a Samsung refrigerator, washing machine, air conditioner, TV, robotic vacuum cleaner, and Galaxy Watch generate enough behavioral and environmental data to build a sufficiently detailed model of everyday life.
The company also encourages interoperability. SmartThings is the first major smart home platform to support Matter-compatible cameras as a full device category, working with partners including Agara, Eve and Xthings. The new SmartThings hub combines Thread, Zigbee 3.0, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3 and Matter control, and doubles as a 15-watt Qi2 wireless charger for Galaxy phones. The open ecosystem approach meaning that maintenance features can, in principle, be extended to any Matter-compatible device beyond Samsung hardware.
Galaxy AI integration adds another layer. SmartThings now automatically learns routines using sensor data from Galaxy phones, and the Routine Creation Assistant, equipped with large language models, allows users to build automations with natural language commands. These automations feed into the care system: a routine that detects that a family member hasn’t turned on the light by the usual time can trigger a check-in alarm.
The questions it raises
Remote monitoring of elderly relatives is a category of real demand and real ethical complexity. Samsung’s features address a real problem: adult children who live far from their aging parents and are concerned about their safety. But they also create an infrastructure of surveillance in someone’s home, run by well-intentioned but imperfectly judgmental family members about whether surveillance should be intrusive.
Samsung says the system is connected and the person being monitored needs to agree. But in family care situations, consent is rarely as clean as a checkbox suggests. An elderly parent beginning to experience cognitive decline may feel pressured to accept well-intentioned child monitoring and may not fully understand what the system can see, hear and infer about their daily lives.
The detection of cognitive decline raises particular questions. Clinical-level cognitive assessment requires controlled conditions, validated instruments, and medical expertise. Samsung’s system uses passive behavioral signals, such as changes in gait, typing speed, sleep patterns, and speech, that studies have linked to cognitive decline, but the accuracy, false positive rate, and clinical validity of a consumer device that performs such screening is not publicly available. A false positive may cause an unnecessary alarm; may provide a false negative false reassurance.
None of these concerns are unique to Samsung. Apple, Google and Amazon build all their health and care features in-house device ecosystemsand the same ethical questions apply to all of them. Samsung’s advantage is that its ecosystem of devices gives it more touchpoints within the home than any phone or speaker-based platform can offer. Whether this advantage translates into better care or simply more comprehensive control depends on how thoughtfully the features are designed and how honestly the limitations are communicated to the families who use them.
Elderly care features are expected to be introduced in 2026 with the launch of the Galaxy S26. SmartThings Pro, a separate offering for HVAC professionals, and energy management enhancements are now available. Samsung has not disclosed pricing for the maintenance features or whether they will be charged subscription outside of existing SmartThings plans.
