Apple Prototypes a Real-Life ‘Luxo Jr.’
Credit: Apple
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Not long after Apple gave up on its automotive ambitions, we began seeing reports that it was working on personal robotics, presumably to redirect some of its efforts and engineering staff. Now, Apple’s machine learning team has given us the first confirmation that the company is up to something in this area.
The reports of Apple’s robotic ambitions have mostly come from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, who revealed early last year that Apple has been running a secret facility near Apple Park in California to test future home automation devices. The lab is said to be configured like the inside of a house, and Apple is likely using it for everything from its rumored home hub and smart camera to tabletop and even roving robots.
While some of these initiatives are likely years away, Apple is prioritizing a “tabletop robot” for a 2027 launch, Gurman says. Several hundred researchers and engineers are working on this device, which is “envisioned as a smart home command center” that would also handle videoconferencing and home security. The hub would have a thin robotic arm that would move a larger screen around to orient it toward the user.
While most of this work is being done with Apple’s usual level of secrecy, a blog post from its machine learning group has offered us a hint of what Apple is developing.
Dubbed ELEGNT, the post describes a “non-anthropomorphic robot” — in this case a desk lamp — that’s still able to convey “expressive qualities, such as intention, attention, and emotions.”
In what can only be an homage to Apple’s legendary co-founder and CEO, Steve Jobs, the lamp bears a striking resemblance to Luxo Jr., the mascot of Pixar Animation Studios and one of the first short films produced by the studio after Jobs became its majority investor in early 1986.
In the video, the lamp appears to have the same whimsical “personality” as the Pixar creation that inspired it. While it’s entirely expressionless, the fluid and gesture-like movements it makes allow it to convey emotion in a way that a purely “functional” robot would not.
Our research hypotheses that robots should not only move to fulfill functional purposes and constraints, but also move ”elegantly,” using movements to express its internal states to humans during interaction.
ELEGNT Video Demonstration
For example, the video shows a comparison of an “Expressive Robot” versus a “Functional Robot” during several scenarios. When asked to reach for an item that’s too far away, the “Expressive” version tries several times and then pulls back and shakes its “head” before declaring that it can’t do it. When asked about the weather, the lamp turns and looks out the window as if it’s checking the conditions before reporting, and when the user says that it’s going hiking, the “Expressive” lamp starts bobbing up and down to ask if it’s invited, and manages to look sad when it’s told that it’s not.
In additional examples, the lamp reminds the user that it’s time to drink water, shining its light on a water cup and then leaning down to nudge it over to the user and dances while playing music.
“Our findings indicate that expression-driven movements significantly enhance user engagement and perceived robot qualities,” the team of researchers said. “This effect is especially pronounced in social-oriented tasks.”
While this is just a prototype device for research purposes, and there’s no guarantee it’s directly related to Apple’s upcoming tabletop robotic home hub, it seems likely that at least some of these findings will be incorporated into Apple’s future robotics projects. Apple is already working to create a personality for its robots, “another humanlike interface based generative AI,” Gurman says, which could “run on the tabletop product and other future Apple robotics devices.”
