It was just a few short months ago when speculation about what would happen to the Apple engineers formerly working on Project Titan (the long-rumoured Apple car). Since the project was shut down, some of them have reportedly shifted to robotics.
Now we may have some idea what some of these engineers have been working on. Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman, who was also the source of the Project-Titan-to-robotics news, reckons the iPhone maker has an all-new product in the works. Yes, robotic components are involved. No, it’s not what you think it is.
Apple knows how to pick ’em
Rather than a Tesla Optimus competitor, Apple is reportedly building a communication device that is an iPad affixed to the end of a robot arm. Much like the concept of a telepresence robot as envisioned by 1990s action movies, the robotic arm would allow the display to move around a room to focus on a particular speaker.
Since an Apple Intelligence announcement is expected any day now, it’s easy to see why a product like this might be pitched and sent to market. The initial report claims that Siri will take the reigns for now, though, so AI might not be that large of a feature.
It’s not the first time a large tech firm has given this idea a go. Meta tried with its Portal range of devices, which (Stuff maintains) were little more than surveillance devices you paid for. We all know how that turned out. But Apple has a track record of hardware hits so maybe sticking its AI system inside a video-calling tablet and hanging it on a robot arm will be a winner.
If it is, we’ll likely have to wait until 2026 or 2027 to find out. That’s relatively rapid as development goes but there are a bunch of former Project Titan engineers hoping to stay on Apple’s payroll. That might be an incentive to bang out something excellent in short order. The company probably also wants to get something featuring artificial intelligence to market before the whole AI bubble properly bursts.