Apparently, Apple wants to expand Apple Intelligence (preferably, when the kinks are worked out) to smart home devices.
The company has filed for a patent for “Techniques for Managing Artificial Intelligence Models for Smart Home Systems.” And it seems to involve the rumored “HomePad.”
About the patent filing
Smart home devices refer to electronic devices that implement home automation functionalities. Smart home devices can include, for example, smart thermostat devices, smart lighting devices, smart lock devices, smart garage devices, smart camera devices, and so on. One key element of smart home systems are smart home hubs, which act as central control systems for various smart home devices that are included in homes.
A given smart home hub can be implemented in different forms, such as a standalone device or a built-in component of other devices (e.g., a smart speaker, a home entertainment system, etc.), and is responsible for facilitating communications between the smart home devices and remote computing devices. In most cases, the smart home devices communicate with smart home hubs via wireless protocols (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.). Additionally, the smart home hubs typically connect to the home’s Wi-Fi network to communicate with the remote computing devices—and, in most cases, gain access to the Internet.
Access to the Internet can enable a variety of useful functionalities to be implemented, such as enabling individuals to control the smart home devices outside of the home, enabling activity logs associated with the smart home devices to be managed by one or more external services, and so on.
In the patent filing, Apple notes that various organizations have, in an effective manner, mitigated the foregoing issues by providing software applications and hardware devices that centralize the control of smart home devices under a unified management interface. In particular, the various smart home hubs of a given home can be configured to interact with a centralized management device—such as a smart home speaker that is capable of communicating with different smart home hubs (and, by extension, the smart home devices that communicate with the smart home hubs)—and the centralized management device can be accessed by a centralized smart home app executing on one or more of the remote computing devices.
In this manner, a user of a remote computing device is able to interact with the various smart home devices through the (single) centralized smart home app, rather than numerous smart home apps that are highly specific to the various smart home devices.
However, despite the foregoing advancements, a variety of challenges continue to persist within the smart home field, particularly with respect to utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to learn and adapt to users’ preferences, behaviors, and routines, in order to offer personalized experiences that enhance convenience and efficiency. Apple’s patent filing involves ways to deal with such issues.
About the ‘HomePad’
The smart home hub — rumored to be called the “HomePad” or maybe “Command Center” — has purportedly been delayed to 2026 due to Apple’s issues with Apple Intelligence. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the device will sport a 7-inch display and a speaker and run an operating system with the codename of “Charismatic.”
He says the OS is designed to be used by multiple members of a household. In the past, Gurman says the operating system will be dubbed “Pebble.” I suspect the final name of the operating system will be “HomeOS.”
Here’s what a September 2024 report from 9to5Mac said about a HomePod with display:
° The device will be powered by an A18 processor.
° It has a squarish display rather than an iPad-ish rectangular design.
° It has a built-in camera that works for FaceTime and other video conferencing apps.
° The device uses the camera to identify hand gestures from a distance.
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