Mark Gruman: Apple to develop a robotic arm for home and office

Apple also needs to find new product areas in order to continue to grow. One new idea for this is a robotic arm that will be useful in video conferences, among other things. Several hundred employees are expected to work on the project.

“Look at me”

There are no images of prototypes yet. However, it is said to be a fairly thin robot arm with an iPad-like display attached. The device is designed as a smart home command center, video conference machine and remote-controlled home security tool, reported the usually well-informed Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman citing sources in the company. The system should be able to respond to voice commands that arrive via Siri. But there should also be a link with the new and upcoming Apple Intelligence features. For example, if the user tells the device, “Look at me,” it will turn to them. The product is operated with its own version of iPadOS.

The system is just one result of a larger push into home automation, which Apple has identified as a potential growth area. The move to robotics is part of a broader initiative to increase sales and use Apple Intelligence, a series of artificial intelligence technologies that will be introduced on iPhone, iPad and Mac this year.

More growth please

The project, codenamed J595, was approved by Apple’s executive team in 2022, but was officially launched in recent months, according to the sources. At the beginning, it was probably one of several attempts to develop innovative products where it is initially unclear whether they will ever come to market.

The same was true of work on a car, which has since been discontinued. In general, Apple has to look for new business areas. This is because the markets that it reaches with the existing hardware are largely saturated. Most recently, the company had mainly worked on milking the existing installation base more by concentrating on the software and services area, but this will ultimately have its limits.