Oliver Haslam on April 4, 2024, 6:33 pm

Apple’s Working On Personal Home Robotics After Dropping The Apple Car

Apple is reportedly turning its attention away from the failed Apple Car project and onto something entirely different. According to a new report, Apple has started a new skunkworks project that aims to focus on personal robotics

Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says that Apple is looking into designing a new, mobile robot that could be used around the home, although that isn’t the only kind of robot that is being discussed.

Engineers at Apple have been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the skunk-works project is private. The iPhone maker also has developed an advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around, they said.

Such a robotic companion could jive well with Apple’s new focus on AI technology, but it’s also important to remember that Apple likely works on all manner of experimental projects and not all of them turn into products. The Apple Car project is the most recent, with Apple having spent a huge sum of money and a decade trying to turn it into a shipping product — only to cancel it.

Whether or not Apple can make such a device work at a price that people are willing to pay is another matter, especially following the release of the $3,499 Apple Vision Pro mixed reality headset.

It’s still early days for this new project, and we can likely expect there to be many more leaks over the coming months and years. But whether it will ever turn into something you can walk into an Apple Store and buy is another matter entirely.