Apple's Next Big Thing: Home Robots with AI Capabilities?

Beep beep, yeah, it's me. Okay

With the Apple car junked, Apple robots could be Cupertino's next moonshot

That's the headline on Cultimac. Apple employees are reportedly working on personal home robotic devices

including a mobile robot and a tabletop device with a moving display

Woo-hoo, baby. Okay. These early efforts toward Apple robots could constitute future revenue sources

now that the Project Titan car project is on the scrap heap

That's the whole thrust of this article. Apple needs a big revenue source

and the car was supposed to be it, so now they're thinking maybe a little iPad

that spins around on top of a table is for your FaceTime calls

or some kind of glorified Roomba or one of those astro robots that Amazon makes

If Apple can make headway on robotics for home use, it could take advantage of evolving artificial intelligence

to create viable products for consumers. It's not yet clear if the mobile Apple robot

and tabletop device will become viable products. There's a report from German

quoting, of course, anonymous sources, because nobody's going to talk about this for sure

They said that the device with a robotic smart display, having come and gone from the Apple product roadmap

in recent years, is more developed than the mobile robot. One of the things that the story said

one of their pie-in-the-sky ideas was this thing might be able to wash dishes

So, I mean, that sounds a lot different from like a little security bot that goes around and

you know, fugs your cat. Isn't that called a dishwasher? I was going to say it is a dishwasher, right

But this dishwasher is powered by Siri, so major improvement there. I'm sorry, I can't do that

Let's see. The work is considered to be in the early research phases

although, you know, we've been hearing about like tabletop HomePod with a spinning iPad attached to it

a robotic arm for a long time. Anyway, early research phases, development appears to be under the auspices

of the AI and machine learning group in Apple's hardware engineering division

Recent explorations have involved a smart home hub with an iPad for display

You know, I mean, is this what Apple needs? I mean, yeah, Apple has a very limited home product

I mean, although every device that they make is in our homes, but I don't know, reading that story

I got me all depressed about the Apple car once again, like Apple car, car that transforms transportation

You know, iPad that sits on a table and spins so you can have a better FaceTime call

It just doesn't seem, I don't know, that those two things are not on the same level

Speaking about things not being on the same plane, what do you think

Is this getting you excited at all? I'm depressed. Well, I'm looking at my Apple stock and I'm like

this ain't it, chief. Actually, I don't know. I mean, look, I think this story from German

is him letting us know what Apple Research is working on. Is this gonna be the next big thing

Probably not, but it could be another viable product category, and Apple seems to be making sure

that they're not gonna be left behind like they were with all of the AI stuff

they just got involved in, even though it's been going on for years and years now

So I don't really know exactly what they mean by robots that live in the home

because what you just described was a dishwasher and I already have one of those

Although, I mean, maybe they're talking about one, like an actual robot. Yeah, like an Android that walks in your sink

and does a short circuit. Now, that actually would be cool. So if they could create an Android

that actually could wash dishes by hand, because I hate doing that and standing there always kills my back