Rumor has it, Apple is exploring the development of personal home robots after ditching its electric vehicle project.
Apparently, the tech giant’s engineers have been looking into developing a home robot that can follow users around their homes.
What’s more, they’ve also supposedly been looking into a tabletop device that uses robotics to adjust a display screen.
READ MORE! Millions of iPhone users had a mysterious new setting automatically switched on
Back in February, Apple shut down its team working on electric cars.
Reports of the secretive program, which allegedly involved thousands of employees, first surfaced in 2014 after Apple recruited automotive engineers among others in relevant roles.
The car project, which was internally referred to as ‘Project Titan’, is estimated to have cost Apple $10 billion.
While it’s disappointing news for those who had wanted to see what an Apple car would look like, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to see new and innovative projects from Apple in the future.
After all, this is the company that gave us the iPhone and the iPod, changing the way that we all thought about using telephones and listening to music.
They’ll be back, even if it isn’t with a car.
It might be with these household robots.
In recent years, the Silicon Valley firm has also invested heavily in products and services like its Apple Watch and Vision Pro virtual reality headset.
According to Bloomberg, Apple’s hardware engineering division and its artificial intelligence and machine learning group are overseeing work on personal robotics.
Apple isn’t the first tech company to explore home robots, though.
Back in 2021, Amazon introduced its $1,600 Astro home robot, which is essentially a smart display on wheels that can answer Alexa commands.
But, despite making its debut three years ago, the device remains available in limited quantities on an invite-only basis.
Then, last May, the executive overseeing the project departed Amazon, and in November, the company launched a version of Astro for businesses akin to a roving security guard.
It’s a slow process, but one day we might all have personal robots in our house, helping us out with our day-to-day stuff.
We’ll just have to wait and see what the big tech companies come back with.
Some images within this article have been created using AI.
