Apple reportedly considering a push into personal robotics

After abandoning its Apple Car project, Apple now has teams investigating a push into personal robotics, a field with the potential to become one of the company’s ever-shifting “next big things,” reports Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman.

Engineers at Apple have purportedly been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes, he says. The tech giant has also has developed an advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around, Gurman adds.

This is interesting. Back in August 2022, I wrote an article that said Apple should make Apple Robots instead of an Apple Car. Here’s what I wrote at at the time: A new report from Counterpoint Research says that the global consumer service robotics market posted 25% year-over-year shipment growth in 2021 and is estimated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 27% over the next four years.

The research group says this growth is driven by the change in consumer preference, advances in technology and the availability of a wide variety of affordable products.

Consumer Service Robot Categories

“House cleaning robots, which mainly comprise robot vacuums, is the most dominant category in the robotics industry, capturing over two-thirds of the total consumer service robotics market. COVID-19 has positively impacted the robot vacuum industry, resulting in increased demand from residential users,” says Senior Research Analyst Anshika Jain. “With advances in AI, the prices of components and software are also coming down, making the robots more affordable. There have also been improvements in technologies like speech recognition and computer vision, which have helped to drive growth. In addition, favorable government policies along with the required funding support are also helping boost the segment.” 

Counterpoint Research Vice President Peter Richardson adds that the market opportunity of Personal and Education robots will exceed US$4.5 billion by 2025 with substantial further growth expected beyond 2025 due to the aging population in many countries and increasing focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)-based learning.

Apple’s Robotics Patents

Apple has filed for and/or been granted patents regarding robotics. For example, in August 21 Apple filed for a patent (number 20210247203) that mentioned robots, as well as cars and submarines. The patent is for “systems and method for generating an interactive user interface.”

The idea is for an interactive user interface providing information relating to operation of an autonomous machine. In the patent filing Apple notes that autonomous machines, including robots, aerial vehicles, aerospace vehicles, submersible vehicles, automobiles, other ground vehicles, and the like, are capable of operating within their respective environments with limited input from a user. However, the tech giant says that conventional autonomous machines generally fail to compensate for this lack of operational engagement between the user and the autonomous machine. 

As a result, the user may be unaware of future actions planned by the autonomous machine and/or lack an understanding of a basis of a decision or action of the autonomous machine, which may unnecessarily decrease a confidence of the user in the autonomous machine or otherwise make the user uneasy. Apple says that, with these observations in mind, various aspects of the present disclosure were conceived and developed. 

And in April 2021 Apple was granted a patent (number 10,976,178) for “systems and methods for generating an interactive user interface.” It involves vehicles, but also other machines, especially those that involve robotics.

In the patent filing, Apple notes that autonomous machines,” including robots, aerial vehicles, aerospace vehicles, submersible vehicles, automobiles, other ground vehicles, and the like,” are capable of operating within their respective environments with limited input from a user. However, the tech giant says that conventional autonomous machines generally fail to compensate for this lack of operational engagement between the user and the autonomous machine.