Apple is reported to be developing a smart home robot. Is it the next Apple Car or the next iPhone?
2024-08-16
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Apple’s next “One More Thing” may be a home robot.After Apple Vision Pro and the abandoned Apple Car project, Apple has been looking for new development projects. The latest news shows that this project is likely to be an iPad+robotic arm design.Smart Homerobot.According to Bloomberg, the Apple team is developing a device that "uses a robotic arm around a display" with a screen that can rotate up and down, up to 360 degrees, and can be controlled by Siri and Apple Intelligence, becoming the central smart home intelligence center of a smart home.People familiar with the matter revealed that the project, code-named J595, was approved by Apple's executive team in 2022, but was only officially launched in recent months. It is planned to debut as early as 2026 or 2027, and the final product price will be around US$1,000.The person in charge of this project is theAutonomous drivingKevin Lynch, a veteran automotive executive, recently recruited key deputies who helped launch the Apple Watch and a well-known robotics researcher to work on this "desktop robot."Kevin Lynch, who was in charge of Apple Watch and Apple Car projectsThe hardware engineering group is also involved. Matt Costello, the head of development of Apple's HomePod smart speaker, is responsible for the hardware part of the project. In a job posting published this month, it can also be seen that Apple is looking for relevant talents who can build robotics systems:We are looking for a roboticist to join the research team in Apple's Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (AIML) organization. This team's work is to leverage and extend breakthrough machine learning applications in robotics, with the goal of developing robust robotic systems that are widely applicable.
In addition to this "desktop robot", many related leaks show that there are also disagreements within Apple about the design of robots, and the team is trying in multiple directions.There are even reports that Apple's internal expectation for the project is a vehicle that can navigate completely autonomously without the need for human intervention, but this direction is basically similar to Apple's previous situation with its car project: at the current level of technology, its feasibility is questionable.In fact, Apple is not the only tech giant in the field of smart home robots. Amazon also launched a smart home robot with a screen, Astro, which also has a large display screen and certain storage and transportation capabilities, but was subsequently recalled due to design defects.Samsung also demonstrated an AI-enabled smart home robot called Ballie at CES 2024. It can control other smart home appliances, display weather and schedule information and other life information in the form of a projection, and has a strong companionship attribute.LG has also launched a similar cute AI home robot Q9, which can not only interact with smart home and IoT devices, but also detect indoor temperature, humidity and other parameters, and even identify emotions by recognizing human facial expressions.It is not difficult to see that this type of robot usually has multiple functions such as intelligent interaction, emotional companionship, and intelligent home appliance control. The core of the design path lies in "personalization" and "family-oriented". This is obviously more suitable for family scenes than the "iPad + robotic arm" form designed by Apple in the current leaks, but even so, these products have not achieved outstanding results in the market.Mark Gurman said that the Apple team was also skeptical about such products, and software engineering executives were concerned about the manpower required, but the project still received support from Apple CEO Tim Cook and hardware engineering director John Ternus.Today, 17 years have passed since the birth of the epoch-making iPhone. Apple has been exploring the next trend besides mobile phones, but there has been no epoch-making product. Under this "internal and external troubles", exploring the "Next Big Thing" is no longer just an option, but an urgent need.Apple's revenue by product in fiscal 2023From this perspective, with the support of AI, the development of embodied intelligence represented by robots has reached a critical point. In addition, the popularization of smart home appliances has become a general trend. It is also a natural choice to choose the field of home smart robots at this time.
