 Amazon Astro home robot. Source: Amazon.com Inc. When Apple Inc. executives have pondered what new products to sell, they realize they have a bit of a dilemma: The company’s devices are already woven into nearly every part of consumers’ lives. People get their information and entertainment through the screens of iPhones, iPads, Macs and Apple TV set-top boxes. AirPods and Beats headphones deliver audio to their ears. And the Apple Watch gives customers a view into their health and fitness. Apple is even trying to literally change the way people see the world through the Vision Pro. The company can always improve those devices (making them smaller, boosting battery life or speeding up processors), but it’s much harder to find a groundbreaking new innovation. Apple failed to create a new product category with its self-driving car project, which was shuttered earlier this year. But the effort did spark an intriguing question within the company: If Apple products can move around on their own, what new experiences could be created? Though the dream of selling an autonomous car ultimately died, the concept was essentially a giant rolling robot. And the fundamental technology can be applied to other areas. Around 2020, Apple began exploring the idea of having other products move around via robotics — an effort that’s still very much alive today. But Apple is still in the early stages of figuring out the best way to use robotics. The test case will be a tabletop device codenamed J595 that brings together a large, iPad-like display with cameras and a base that features a robotic actuator. That product likely will arrive around 2026 or 2027, followed by mobile robots and possibly even humanoid models in the next decade. With robotics, Apple believes it can solve a series of first-world problems: - Your device is only useful if you can reach it. There are many occasions when you might like to use your computer but it isn’t nearby — or your hands are otherwise occupied. Maybe you left a device in your home office, but now you’re in the kitchen or living room and need it.
- You may want to take photos of things or launch a videoconferencing session, but you’re not holding a device or sitting directly in front of it.
- You might want to operate or check something in your home while being out of the house.
 Meta’s now-discontinued Portal Plus. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg Attaching a robotic limb to the iPad, for instance, will potentially make the device more useful for videoconferencing or browsing the web for recipes. If you’re busy in the kitchen, it can swivel the screen around to face you. Someday, an Apple robot could go further. Apple has envisioned machines that can do household chores — like loading up a laundry machine or scrubbing down dirty plates — but that’s still so far in the future that the ideas don’t go beyond sketches on a whiteboard. Advances in artificial intelligence will also give the concept a boost. It’s clear that AI will be at the core of any robotic device in the future. But Apple can also apply its expertise in sensors, advanced silicon, hardware engineering and batteries, as well as its ability to map the spaces around devices. Given all that, some people within Apple say it’s the perfect time to tackle robotics. And shutting down the car project, which had hundreds of engineers with experience in self-driving technology and robotic systems, helped free up staff and resources to pursue the idea aggressively. But others say it’s an exaggeration to describe robotics as some major new frontier that the company will be able to conquer. A successful robotics device could help Apple finally break into the smart home — an area where it’s trailed behind Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google. The tabletop device might be the thing that finally helps Apple home devices stand out. The work on robots is led by Kevin Lynch, Apple’s vice president of technology, who previously ran the car team as well as watch software engineering. He reports to Apple’s AI chief and works alongside robotics teams within the hardware engineering division. Recently, Apple has hired top robotics experts from places like Technion in Israel.  Kevin Lynch, the Apple executive leading its robotics effort. Photographer: Brittany Hosea-Small/AFP/Getty Images One vital piece of the robotic work is the creation of a personality. While Siri is the digital assistant on Apple’s current devices, the company is working on another humanlike interface based on generative AI. It could run on the tabletop product and other future Apple robotics devices, I’m told. To be sure, Apple and the rest of the robotics industry still have a long way to go. Let’s be honest: The robots on the market today are costly, not very smart and lacking in capabilities. There’s also the reality that most consumers are probably not ready to live like The Jetsons. There are many technical problems to overcome, including having hardware that can successfully roam through cluttered spaces and navigate buildings with multiple floors. For now, the technology is going to be incredibly expensive for both Apple to build and for consumers to buy. The company is also going to need more talent, including many more engineers, to bring something truly meaningful to market. Apple knows this as well. A few years ago, its M&A chief, Adrian Perica, met with robotics firm Boston Dynamics about a potential acquisition. (Hyundai Motor Group later bought a majority stake in the business, famous for its robot dogs, in 2021.) People involved in Apple’s robotics work believe there is a lot of promise, though there’s also plenty of reason to be skeptical. The car project failed, and the company has struggled in other areas, such as the development of augmented reality spectacles. It’s not clear how committed Apple is to actually bringing something to market. But if the company truly wants to find another way into consumers’ lives, robotics might make the most sense. | 
