Apple's next big thing could be a home robot
An Apple robotics division has risen from the ashes of the Apple Car and wants to build an autonomous robot companion for your home.
A generated image of a toy-like Apple robot
The Apple Car may not have panned out, but research into autonomous systems and robotics may have opened the door to Apple's next project. No, it's not a robot vacuum, but something more advanced for your desk or home.
According to employees familiar with the matter speaking to Bloomberg, robotics work is happening under Apple's hardware engineering division and AI group. AI head John Giannandrea and home product executives Matt Costello and Brian Lynch oversee the project.
Apple had wanted to focus on automotive, the home, and spatial computing, but with Apple Car canceled, work has shifted to the home. The robotics team has two projects underway, but neither has been greenlit to become actual products yet.
One is a robotic monitor arm that can follow the user or react to certain on-screen situations. For example, the monitor might nod when a person in a chat is nodding.
The other is a more ambitious project where a robot would follow the user around the home. It isn't clear what function it would serve today, but the moonshot is to perform simple chores or commands.
Companies like Amazon have shown some interest in the home robotics space. So far, consumer products have taken the form of camera drones and little robots on wheels with digital faces that can act as security.
Both projects rely heavily on Apple's push into artificial intelligence. Autonomous systems and the Apple Car's rumored safetyOS could apply to robots.
Of course, Apple's internal labs work on many projects that never see the light of day. Robots may be interesting to some, but there's not much utility in the technology available today beyond mopping floors.
However, Apple does love entering a field it gets to disrupt. Perhaps an Apple robot could do something others cannot.
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Comments
Apple just throwing stuff out there and seeing what sticks lol.
Apple does not seem to be focused. Ring, the apple car, robots now.. When can we expect real things?
There have been many rumored products over the years that never materialized. Steve Jobs talked bout how Apple developed a PDA and scrapped it, there was the rumored audio interface for GarageBand that Think Secret reported and Apple sued them out of existence for covering, I feel like there was a camera in there but that might be wishful thinking on my part. Phones were something they were considering and was born out of the iPad project. So yeah, Apple fiddles with ideas and pursues the one's they think are viable. Kinda the point of R&D.
As for "real" things go, Apple post Steve Job's return isn't a company that ventures into entirely new product lines frequently and they just released did the Apple Vision Pro. I don't think we are going to see a big new products in the near future. Refreshes of existing stuff? Sure.
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There are things I do around the house that, in principle, an AI-enabled robot could learn and replicate, like filling and emptying the dishwasher, vacuuming, taking out the trash, etc. In some ways that would be easier than an autonomous vehicle because the stakes of mistakes are lower -- breaking a dish isn't as bad as running over a pedestrian. And with an aging/shrinking population more domestic help will be needed.
But... humans are very well adapted to the context in which humans operate, and creating a robot that can add value in that context will be very hard -- even harder to do it cost effectively. With enough time and investment it could be done, I suppose, but I bet this is more than 10 years away.
To my way of thinking the more promising context for developing robots is space exploration. Humans are not well adapted to space *at all*. Space is hard on everything, but robots might be better suited for it than humans, if for no other reason than they are expendable (the fact that they don't need to breathe is pretty nice, though). So I suspect SpaceX is better positioned to develop robots than Apple. Too bad SpaceX is owned by Elon Musk.
Any company in Apple's position will research a very wide variety of possible devices and services. Some of those will get some level of development, and a very, very small subset of those will pan out and become "real things."
Apple has a pretty high success rate for when they release new "real things." The reality is that they don't come often, and they take several years with several model upgrades before they achieve widespread adoption. At that point, they seem ubiquitous and everyone thinks they were an overnight sensation. After that, each product line sees nearly annual enhancements and updates at an intentional pace designed to encourage owners of several-year-old models to upgrade while also not making people who spent good money on last year's model feel like it's already obsolete.
I'm talking post Job's return. Back when Apple was doing the "digital hub" marketing for the Mac. They were going through this process of software & hardware combos.
iiTunes/iPod,
iChat/iSight
iDVD/Superdrive
GarageBand/Rumored Audio Input Device, I found this article on MacRumors about it. Funny, the MacRumors actually cites Apple Insider as their source but the AI link doesn't work.
iMovie & iPhone/??? & Photo printing service.
I have a vague memory of a rumored camera/DVcamera that was meant be an accessory for iPhoto and iMove. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part.
But anyway, my comment was in reference to something a bit newer than the Qukctake
I also guess one could argue Apple ultimately did make a camera/DV Camera in the form of the iPhone.
Internet rumor != reality. Even if real Apple has repeatedly stated they work on multiple idea but are focused and have to say no to a lot of good ideas.