Apple robots are set to revolutionise the smart home

WRITTEN BY PHIL KING

While the shuttering of Apple’s self-driving car project earlier this year was disappointing, the lessons learnt during its development may well prove useful on a smaller scale – in robotic devices for the home.

The first Apple robot is expected to be a tabletop assistant arriving in 2026 or 2027, to be followed later by a more sophisticated mobile droid. So could Apple reshape the smart home in the same way that it revolutionised smartphones, tablets, and wearables? The company’s move into robotics, combined with the power of its artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, Apple Intelligence, could transform not only the types of devices we have at home but also how we interact with them.

First up, the planned tabletop robot – codenamed J595 – is likely to serve as an Apple Intelligence-powered assistant that integrates into your smart home. Its likely design will feature an iPad-like screen on a robotic arm that, with the use of a camera and facial recognition, can swivel to follow your gaze. This feature could prove useful for applications such as video conferencing, always keeping your face in the frame, and home cooking, enabling you to keep tabs on a recipe as you move around the kitchen.

A fully mobile Apple robot is an even more appealing prospect. Imagine a device that not only answers questions and controls your smart home appliances, but also moves autonomously around the home to assist you. We can envisage it having a similar form factor to the Amazon Astro, a wheeled robot equipped with a screen, sensors and camera, enabling it double as a home security device when you’re out.

Integrating Apple Intelligence into such a robot could lead to capabilities far beyond what we see in today’s home robots. Apple is known for its ability to take emerging technologies and elevate them into the mainstream. Could the Apple robot be the next leap forward? Will it lead to a future where intelligent robots are as common in our homes as smartphones, tablets, and smart speakers?

Let’s take a look at the history of domestic robots so far, speculate on the future, and examine how Apple and AppIe Intelligence could shape this exciting new frontier.

Early beginnings

The concept of an automaton to aid humans dates back as far as ancient Greece, long before the term robot (from the Czech word for ‘slave’) was coined, in 1922, and robots became a mainstay of science fiction.