Humanoid robots are one of those dreams that we sometimes feel like we are about to come true. Boston Dynamics has its Atlas robot and Tesla is dedicated to robotics, while companies such as Mercedes, amazon and BMW are or will test robots for industrial use. But those are all very expensive robots that perform tasks in controlled environments. At home, they may still be far away.
Enter Apple. Mark Gurman in Bloomberg has said Its robotics projects are under the responsibility of former Google employee John Giannandrea, who has been in charge of Siri and, for a time, the Apple Car. With the car project canceled, the launch of Vision Pro and “Intelligence of Apple” just around the corner, ai-announcements-will-enable-home-robot-ar-glasses-camera-airpods-lx7jem9f?srnd=undefined”>Is that the next big thing??
According to their information, any humanoid robot from Apple is at least a decade away. Still, simpler ideas may be closer: a smaller robot that could follow you everywhere or another idea involving a large iPad screen on a robotic arm that emotes along with the caller on the other end with head movements and similar things.
Many, if not most, homes are dens of chaos that confuse robots.
However, a mobile robot is complicated; What the hell would Apple do? do With a home robot that follows me everywhere? Will it play music? Will it have wheels or will it walk? Will I be expected to talk to AJAX or SiriGPT or whatever the company calls their chatbot? Or, given Apple's rumored OpenAI deal, some other chatbot?
Furthermore, what form will it take? Will it fly? Will it have wheels? Will it be a ball? I can kick it?
Its form factor will be at least as important as its intelligence. Houses have stairs, furniture that sometimes moves, clothes that end up on the floor, pets that get in the way, and children that leave their things behind. everywhere. The doors that opened or closed correctly yesterday do not do so today because it rained. A messy kitchen remodel 20 years ago could mean your refrigerator door slammed into the corner of the wall next to the stairs because why would you put refrigerator space anywhere else? David? But I digress.
Based on the small details that have leaked, Apple's robotic ideas seem to fit into a trend of charming novelty robots we've been seeing lately.
A recent example is Samsung. tech-Trio-Samsung-Bot-Handy-Housework-robot”>Practical bot concept, which looks like a robot vacuum cleaner with a stem on top and a single articulated arm, meant to perform tasks like picking up your waste or sorting your dishes. There's also the cute ball robot, Ballie, that Samsung showed off at a couple of CES shows. The latest version follows its humans and includes a projector that can be used for movies, video calls, or entertaining the family dog.
Meanwhile, amazon amazon.com/Introducing-amazon-Astro/dp/B078NSDFSB?tag=theverge02-20″>$1,600 home robot With one tablet per side, Astro is still available by invitation only. It's charming, in a sort of sleek late '90s Compaq computer aesthetic, but it's not clear that it's functionally more useful than some cheap wired cameras and an Echo Dot.
LG says It's Q9”ai Agent” is a roaming smart home controller that can guess your mood and play music based on how it assumes you're feeling. I'm very skeptical about all that, but it has a handle and I love a piece of technology with a built-in handle.
I still want a sci-fi future filled with robotic home assistants to save us from the mundane tasks that prevent us from doing the fun things we'd rather do. But not all of us live in the pristine and orderly abode that appears in Samsung Ballie Video or the videos that Apple produces showing its hardware in personal spaces. Many normal homes are dens of robot-confounding chaos that tech companies will have a hard time explaining when they create robots designed to follow us around or perform household tasks autonomously.
There are other paths to follow. Take the Ring Always Home Cam, which be very noisy Judging by the demo videos, but it could also be useful and even good. While we leave aside the not-insignificant privacy implications for a moment, I find it promising primarily due to mobility and the fact that it's only designed to be a patrol security camera.
That kind of focused functionality means it's predictable, which is what makes single-purpose gadgets and accessories work. After a little experimentation, my smart speakers are either the places where they hear me consistently or are the most useful, and I can place my robot vacuums in rooms that I know I will keep clean enough that they don't get caught or break something (usually ). .
The robot vacuums I have (the Eufy Robovac L35 and a Roomba j7) work well, but sometimes they need to be rescued when they find my cat's stringy toys or eat a paper clip (which is somehow always on the floor, although they never , we never really need one or even know where we keep them).
I have a son, you see, and paving the way for them in other parts of the house is just adding more work to the mix. That's fine by me because the two rooms they're in charge of are the ones that need vacuuming the most, so they're still solving a problem, but it points to the broader obstacles robotic products face.
And it's not so clear that ai can solve those problems. TO New York Times opinion article ai-openai-chatgpt-overrated-hype.html?smid=nytcore-android-share#:~:text=A.I.%20could%20end%20up%20like%20the%20Roomba”>recently pointed out that for all the whining about the technology over the last year and a half, generative ai has not proven that it will be better at creating text, images and music than the “mediocre robot vacuum cleaner that does a passable job.” ”
Given the rise of generative ai and rumors that Apple is working on a HomePod with screena cheerful, stationary smart screen that obsequiously rotates its screen to look at me all the time seems at least vaguely within the company's wheelhouse. Moving around the house and interacting with objects is a more complicated problem, but companies like Google and Toyota have had success using generative ai training approaches for robots that “learn” how to do things like make breakfast or sort items quickly with little effort. or no explicit programming. .
It will be years, maybe even decades, before Apple or anyone else can bring us anything more than clumsy, half-useful robots wandering around our homes, being strange, frustrating, or broken. Heck, phone companies haven't even figured out how to make notifications anything more than the bane of our collective existence. They have their work cut out for them in homes like mine, where we're just a busy week away from piles of clutter building up like snowdrifts, ready to ruin some poor robot's day.
