Apple’s new home robot could finally be the robo-pet every ’90s kid dreamed of

Summary

Apple’s rumored tabletop robot is years away, but a simpler smart display is reportedly coming soon.
The company’s researchers have been looking into the advantages of a more expressive, playful robot.
Besides home security features, video calling, and media playback, it seems like Apple might build a robot with personality.

Apple’s smart home robot is still years away according to current reporting from Bloomberg. But we’ll get a preview of what the tech giant has in store for the smart home with a less ambitious smart display product coming later this year. It’ll be what amounts to a mountable iPad on a base, with some new software, but that’s all to lay the groundwork for something bigger. Apple’s first robot — rumored to be a display attached to a robotic arm or rotating base — and a much bigger push into smart home tech.

Robots historically haven’t gained much traction outside of vacuums and mops, but Apple’s “iPad on a robot arm” could have an advantage few of its competitors do by being less of a rigid smart display, and instead, something expressive and alive — almost like a pet.

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Nonverbal expression seems to play a role in the company’s plans

Apple Machine Learning Research

In a report from 2024, Bloomberg described Apple’s robot as costing “around $1,000” and focused on “home security monitoring, advanced videoconferencing, and media playback with high-quality audio.” The device Apple is considering would be an extension of current-day smart displays, capable of controlling lights, locks, and other electronics in your home, playing videos, and making FaceTime calls, but mounted “atop a swiveling robotic limb.” The software interface of this new device is a bit of a mystery, but expecting something that straddles the design of tvOS and iPadOS doesn’t seem to be too much of a stretch. The missing ingredient is how Apple imagines that robot arm.

Based on research published in January 2025, the company’s been looking at how expressiveness could influence how people perceive robots, and just so happens to be using a prototype robot lamp that seems a lot like the company’s rumored device. The prototype Apple researchers created has a lot of personality, swinging, bobbing, and swaying like something that’s alive rather than moving with the mechanical movements of, well, a robot. More importantly, it seems like all of that expressiveness could offer Apple’s theoretical robot new ways of communicating information, too.

A diagram illustrating the components of the prototype and the different ways you can interact with it.

Apple Machine Learning Research / Pocket-lint

The research prototype can nod its “head” yes and no, seemingly express it when it’s failed to complete a task, and even dance. That’s on top of responding to hand gestures directing what it’s looking at and where it should be pointing. Bloomberg’s report suggests that one of the simplest tasks Apple’s robot could do is track your movements during a FaceTime call so you stay in frame and in focus (some iPads and Macs already do this by cropping a wide angle shot and adjusting the crop over time in a feature Apple calls Center Stage), but there are clearly a lot of additional benefits that can be wrung out of a tablet that can move.

While the prototype seems fully-featured, there’s no guarantee Apple’s final product will be released or even look like that.

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Amazon

There are hundreds if not thousands of different smart home products currently available, but the ones you can reasonably describe as “robotic” are a small group that have largely failed to connect. You can purchase a robot vacuum, lawn mower, or mop and will likely be happy with the service you receive, of course. CES 2024 was full of iterations on these ideas: a Roborock vacuum with an arm that can collect socks, a Dreame vacuum with legs for getting over small steps, the list goes on. But none of these options are what people think of when they think of a “home robot.”

Amazon came close. When it was first announced, it seemed like Amazon Astro could be a baby step towards the sci-fi future most people imagine. Amazon’s robot can navigate your home, respond to voice commands like an Echo smart speaker, and features a screen that can display information. Astro also has a little cubby for carrying things around your home, and a camera that can be extended to monitor your space when you’re not there. The main problem with Astro is that it’s more than a little expensive at $1,599 and Amazon never made it widely available. You still need an invitation to buy the robot years later.

There are hundreds if not thousands of different smart home products currently available, but ones you can reasonably describe as “robotic” are a small group that have largely failed to connect.

If robots that can do more than just vacuum are still a distant dream, then whatever Apple plans to do probably will and should be more modest. Supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes the company “cares more about how users build perception with robots than their physical appearance,” which means an expressive, anthropomorphic iPad-on-an-arm might be exactly what Apple’s shooting for. There’s a whole lineage of home robots that are more about companionship than functionality that this kind of product could neatly fit in. Something like the Elli Q, a combination of a display and a robotic “head” that can answer questions, set reminders, and generally just be a friend to older folks still living on their own. Jibo, a robotic smart speaker with a display for a face mounted on a head that can swivel, rotate, and lean, also feels like a natural analogue.

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A 2nd generation Apple HomePod in white.

No one company fully owns the smart home space. There are probably still more Amazon Echo devices out in the wild than anything else, but it wouldn’t be incorrect to say that Amazon has let Alexa flounder while it tries to adapt to the new generative AI landscape. It’s also not really clear if Google intends to make more Google Nest Hubs at this point. There’s an Amazon event on February 26 that could reveal where Alexa’s heading and Google I/O in May to look forward to, but Apple’s vision, if we can call some research projects that, is interesting right now.

In their testing, Apple’s researchers found that users responded more positively to expressive robots, especially in more socially-oriented tasks. Multiple participants said that Apple’s prototype robot lamp “[reminded] them of a ‘puppy’ or ‘child.'” To me, that sounds like the kind of thing that could make a smart home robot catch on with anyone who doesn’t have a desire for clean floors.