I have no doubt that Apple is exploring robotics, and has probably been doing so for years. Every major tech brand worth its salt has at least dipped its toe in the space and usually found the waters too cold or muddy to trust.
Main Apple rival (and partner) Microsoft has delved into robotics since the late 1990s and into the early 1990s. There were development kits and reference software and I imagine there were some big plans, but they ultimately went nowhere. Google bought parkour-enabled robot manufacturer Boston Dynamics in 2013, only to sell it a few years later. Amazon has an expensive robot, Astro, that no one, at least as far as I know, owns. Sony’s AIBO robot dog lived, died and was revived, but never sold in large numbers.
Apple’s apparent plans, as detailed in a Bloomberg reporthowever, come at a very different time in the home robotics race. Quite a few humanoid robots and robot plans are suddenly popping up at Tesla (Optimus), Figure AI, Nvidia and elsewhere, plus all those robot dogs appearing everywhere the streets of New York City Unpleasant the circus as a substitute for live animals. There’s a sense that we might be closer to seeing useful home robots this time around; and if so, why wouldn’t Apple be part of it?
I would counter that we are not nearly as close as we think. Yes, there are some great demos of robots that understand conversations and learn on the fly. AI really boosts the cognition side of things. However, robotics is still limited by hardware, actuators, safety in handling people and most importantly battery life.
Apple’s apparent turn toward robotics as some sort of failed consolation prize for the auto industry makes no sense. Bloomberg technology reporter Mark Gurman notes that Apple needs new revenue streams, which is one of the reasons why Apple is now looking into robotics. But that makes no sense. It will take years, if not decades, for robots to sell the millions needed for the product line to generate a reliable and profit-positive revenue stream.
A slippery robot slope
High-quality robots, even when linked to a desktop, are expensive to make and program, and the bar for human interaction is high. If a robot fails to appear responsive, friendly, and ready to anthropomorphize, it will fail.
Even when these benchmarks are met, robotic products fail. To remind Jibo? Of course not. It was designed and built by one of the smartest people I’ve ever met in the field of robotics, Dr. Cynthea Breazeal. She was an MIT graduate and envisioned a friendly desktop family robot who can communicate, play, entertain and help you. A lot of time was spent on the animations and even though it didn’t look like a person at all, it still had a hint of humanity.
“It’s a robot, so let’s celebrate that it’s a robot,” Dr. Brezeal me. I enjoyed working with it, and within a few years it was gone. Why? Maybe it was the development costs, but more likely it’s that consumers just weren’t buying.
I’ve seen so many companion robots in my time that invariably brought with them grand promises of global domination. At most, they end up in retirement homes, where older adults pet them robot seals And rage techno dogs.
Nothing about this market screams “mass” or “scale,” two things Apple likes to see in virtually every product category it enters.
Apple could do it
I have no doubt that Apple could build a robot pet that would rival Boston Dynamic’s AIBO or even SPOT, but if the latter is any guide, such a beautiful, interactive, AI-powered piece of hardware could well be more than could cost $20,000.
Apple could stick with the desktop robot that actually looks at you and can even mimic the head movements of someone on the other end of a FaceTime call, but why would they? Would Apple really build a product for what is clearly an edge case? How many people need that movement to understand what the person on the other end of a video call is trying to convey?
I understand what’s happening here. With the loss of the decade-long will – it won’t be the Apple Car saga, we’ll need a new Apple MacGuffin to consume our imaginations for the next five years. We’ll do that until Apple eventually ditches the research project in favor of another category with broader consumer appeal.
Whatever Apple does or doesn’t do, I can’t help but think about something Tandy Trower, Hoaloha Robotics Founder and a former Microsoft executive who eventually led that company’s robotics program told me a decade ago in response Andy Rubin’s abrupt departure from Google soon after, the company bought a number of robotics companies and placed them all under his leadership: “Inventing useful, useful personal robots is easier than delivering them.”