Move over Roomba! An Apple smart home robot is reportedly in the works

Apple wants to get a personal robot into your home.

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Is Apple working on a personal robot with a smart display?
Credit: pio3 / Shutterstock.com

Apple wants to get smart home robots into our households, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Arguably, the Cupertino-based tech giant already had a successful foray into a new category (i.e., mixed-reality headsets), so why not take another risk?

The iPhone maker is reportedly working on a personal bot that can follow owners around their home, Bloomberg said, similar to Samsung’s Ballie or Amazon’s Astro.

Everything we know so far about the Apple smart home robotCiting “people who asked not to be identified,” Bloomberg wants us to believe that, behind the scenes, Apple engineers are currently exploring personal robots for the home. The project is still in the beginning stages, though, so it’s unclear whether it’ll be released in the future.

All we know so far is that it supposedly features a built-in display that uses robotics to move automatically. However, this screen has been a source of contention for the company.

At first, Apple reportedly wanted the display to mimic the head movements of callers on FaceTime (e.g., nodding). Engineers also allegedly conceived an idea in which the smart display would have the ability to frame a single person within a crowd during a call.

However, you know how expensive Apple products can be, so the Cupertino-based tech giant was concerned whether consumers would shell out their hard-earned money for such ho-hum features.

Another issue is that engineers have been reportedly struggling with balancing the display’s weight on the personal robot’s motor. According to Bloomberg, Apple executives are questioning whether the personal smart home robot is a worthy investment at all.

If Apple does, indeed, move forward with the project, it faces huge competition with Roomba, the most popular home robot.

Personal robotics isn’t the only category Apple has been diving into behind the scenes. Rumor has it that Apple is focusing its efforts on artificial intelligence more than ever, with Siri potentially benefitting from some of the advancements.

Only time will tell whether Apple’s reported personal robotics project will take off like the Apple Vision Pro — or be scrapped like the Apple Car.

Kimberly Gedeon is a tech explorer who enjoys doing deep dives into the most popular gadgets, from the latest iPhones to the most immersive VR headsets. She’s drawn to strange, avant-garde, bizarre tech, whether it’s a 3D laptop, a gaming rig that can transform into a briefcase, or smart glasses that can capture video. Her journalism career kicked off about a decade ago at MadameNoire where she covered tech and business before landing as a tech editor at Laptop Mag in 2020.

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