If you’ve ever seen the Disney animated film Wall-E, you’ll have a fairly good idea of what most folks reckon a robot made by Apple would look like. HINT: It’s not Wall-E himself. But you might not have to speculate on what the actual design might look like. The fruit company may show everyone in the somewhat-near future.
That’s according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who tends to have a very clear inside line on what the company is up to at any given moment. And Gurman reckons that Apple has teams investigating the feasibility of developing and launching a line of home robots.
Robotic Apple
It turns out there are all sorts of folks looking for something to do at the company’s ground-based UFO campus following the end of Project Titan, Apple’s exploration into the world of self-driving automobiles. One of these tasks they’re exploring is some sort of home robot.
Don’t expect anything like an announcement at this year’s WWDC, however. Gurman reports that the exploration is still in the very early stages and it’s too soon to properly speculate what will be on offer. This assumes that development leads to production. Apple is known for taking its time there, too.
Still, there is some speculation. A prototype apparently exists that will follow users around, similar to the behaviour of LG’s recently unveiled AI agent. Another test device sits on a desk and tracks users, which sounds like a more advanced version of the now-defunct Meta Portal. Any and all devices, should they see release, will presumably incorporate the artificial intelligence functions the company is expected to unveil in early June this year at WWDC 2024.
The major challenge for the project’s continuation seems to be uncertainty over what folks will pay for an Apple-made in-home robotic assistant. The company’s hardware wouldn’t be cheap — witness the cost of the Vision Pro headset — and convincing folks to buy into something super-pricey and fairly experimental might be a hurdle that isn’t worth clearing. It may simply continue its push into the VR space with the Vision Pro and its successor headsets, something that is currently taking place anyway. As ever with Apple, it’s only official once it’s announced on stage. Or when someone ‘accidentally’ leaves it in a bar.