UPDATED 19:06 EST / APRIL 03 2024

EMERGING TECH

Having quit car development, Apple now reportedly working on personal robotics

Fresh from having scrapped its electric car project in February, Apple Inc. is reportedly now working on personal robotics, including a mobile robot that can follow people around their homes.

The claim comes from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter who claim that robotics has the potential to become one of the company’s “next big thing.” Along with a robot that follows people around their homes, Apple is also said to have developed an advanced tabletop home device that uses robotics to move a display around.

The robotics effort at Apple is claimed to be in its early stages, with Gurman noting that it’s unclear if any of the products currently being developed will ever be released. The robotics work is said to be taking place in Apple’s hardware division and its artificial intelligence and machine-learning group. However, Apple still hasn’t committed to either project as a company and the work is still considered to be in the early research phase.

The tabletop robotics device is apparently not entirely new and is said to have first been presented to Apple executives a “few years ago.” The idea behind the device was to have a display that mimics head movements, such as nodding, of a person on a FaceTime session and a feature to lock onto a single person among a crowd during a video call.

Apple executives reportedly have expressed concerns about whether consumers would be willing to pay top dollar for the device and there were also technical challenges with balancing the weight of a robotic motor on a small stand. Those issues aside, Gurman’s sources claim that the main obstacle has been disagreement among Apple executives on whether to move forward with the project.

That Apple is looking for its next big thing comes as no surprise, particularly after it scrapped its car project. Called Project Titan, the car program had around 2,000 employees, many of whom were reassigned to other Apple teams, including those building generative artificial intelligence projects.

Notably, some of those working on Project Titan were hardware engineers, and although cars are certainly different from robots, both require mechanical engineering and the former car workers may be ideal for the task. Notably, Gurman’s report notes that at least one former hardware team member from the shuttered car project was recently transferred to work on home devices and robotics and there may well be others.

Image: DALL-E 3

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