For every technology success story, there are countless projects that hit the wall of reality. Apple’s electric vehicle ambitions are one of the latest — and, frankly, best — examples of a project that fails despite seemingly having everything going for it.
The jury is still out on the Vision Pro’s ultimate fate, but at the very least, Apple’s mixed reality headset proves that the company isn’t afraid to keep trying where almost everyone else has failed. With the Apple Car firmly on the back burner, the company is reportedly exploring yet another unpleasant avenue: household robots.
The category is both unique and uniquely difficult for several reasons. One thing that sets it apart from other categories is the fact that there has been exactly one success story: the vacuum robot. It’s been 22 years since the first Roomba was introduced, and for the past two decades, an entire industry (including iRobot itself) has been chasing that success.
iRobot’s inability to strike gold a second time isn’t for lack of trying. In the nearly quarter-century since it introduced the Roomba, it’s given us gutter cleaners, pool cleaners, lawn mowers, and even a Roomba specifically designed to remove screws and other hardware debris from garage floors. Despite these efforts, however, the company fared better when it focused its resources back on the vacuum robot.
Image Credits: i robot
The robot vacuum succeeded for the same reason that any robot has ever succeeded: It was a product built to repeatedly perform a single, in-demand task to the best of its ability. To this day, vacuums are the battlefield on which the home robot wars are fought. Take well-funded Bay Area startup Matic. The former Google/Nest engineers who founded the company believe that the next breakthrough in the home will be built on the foundation of robotic vacuums. Their case, in part, is that iRobot has effectively painted itself into a corner with the elf-like form factor.
These early Roombas were not built with today’s sensing and mapping capabilities in mind. Matic believes that by simply making the robot taller, you dramatically improve its advantage. This was also the driver behind the most interesting innovation found in Amazon’s Astro home robot: the periscope camera.
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/astro_media_on-white_03.png)
Image Credits: Amazon
The fact is that the functionality of the home robot is severely hampered by the form factor. The hockey stick design that dominates robot vacuums isn’t ideal for anything beyond the basic functionality it’s built for. To effectively perform more of the kinds of tasks people might want in a home robot, the hardware needs to get more complex. Mobile operators are an excellent moving target. That is, if you want a helping hand, a hand is a good place to start.
Like so many other things in this world, however, mobile operators are deceptively difficult. In fact, industrial robotics has not yet achieved this. Large, bolt-on arms are common in manufacturing, and autonomous wheeled robots (AMRs) like Locus and Kiva are common in warehouses, but the middle ground between the two has not been firmly established. This is a large part of the reason the human element remains important in this world. It’s a problem that will be solved soon enough, but it seems likely that it will happen to these more expensive industrial machines long before it reaches more affordable home robots (as a rule, companies generally have deeper pockets than people).
This is also a big reason why many champion the humanoid form factor in the workplace (humans, after all, offer a kind of mobile manipulation). But that’s a long thought for another day.
![human interacting with Hello Robotics](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Screenshot-2024-02-12-at-6.09.21%E2%80%AFPM.jpg)
Image Credits: Hello Robotics
Mobile manipulation is not completely out of reach for home robots. Hello Robot’s Stretch is probably the most exciting example right now. Instead of a humanoid shape, the robot looks like a Roomba with a pole mounted in its center. This houses both an imaging system and an arm that moves up and down to clip objects (plates, clothes) at different heights. Of course, some tasks are easier to perform with two hands – and suddenly you start to see why so many robotics companies have essentially built humanoids backwards.
In its current form, the Stretch is prohibitively expensive at $24,950. That’s likely a big part of the reason the company is selling it as a development platform. Interestingly, Matic sees its own robot as a kind of growth platform — using the vacuum cleaner as a gateway to additional household chores.
Another problem with Stretch is that it is remote controlled. There’s nothing wrong with teleop in many scenarios, but it seems unlikely that people will flock to a human-controlled home robot somewhere far away.
Navigation is another key hurdle for the home. Compared to warehouses and factories, homes are relatively unstructured environments. They vary a lot from one to the other, the lighting tends to be all over the place and people are constantly moving things around and dropping things on the floor.
![Matt broom](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/an-animated-gif-showing-a-floor-level-view-of-a-boxy-black-and-white-robot-vacuum-cleaning-up-a-mess-1.webp)
Matic’s vacuum uses a series of cameras to map spaces — and understand where it is in them. Image Credits: Matic
The self-driving world has faced its own obstacles on this front. But the key difference between an autonomous robot on the highway and another at home is that the worst the latter will likely do is knock something off the shelf. This is bad, but very rarely leads to death. With self-driving cars, on the other hand, every accident represents a major step backwards for the industry. Technology – perhaps understandably – is held to a higher standard than its human counterpart.
While the adoption of self-driving technologies is far behind the curve that many expected, mainly for the aforementioned safety reason, many of the technologies developed for the segment have helped quietly start their own robotic revolution as autonomous vehicles take over farms and sidewalks.
That’s likely a big part of the reason he may see home robots as “the next big thing” (to quote Bloomberg quoting its sources). Apple has undoubtedly poured a huge amount of resources into driving technologies. If they could be repurposed for a different project, it might not all be in vain.
While reports note that Apple is “not committed” to either the robotic smart display or the mobile robot that are said to exist somewhere in the company’s skunkworks, it has already put Apple Home execs Matt Costello and Brian Lynch on its side. material. , while SVP of Machine Learning and AI Strategy John Giannandrea is said to be involved on the AI side of things.
![](https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Vision-Pro-IMG-2.jpeg)
Image Credits: Brian Heater
Given the proximity to its domestic efforts, one can imagine the company working on its own version of Amazon’s Astro — though that project currently exists more as a cautionary tale for now. The project has been delayed due to the high cost and lack of useful features to justify it. The system also worked effectively as a mobile Alexa gateway, and home assistants have fallen out of fashion lately.
Apple has some robotics expertise — though nothing close to what Amazon has on its industrial side. The company has been involved in making robot arms like Daisy, which salvages base metals from discarded iPhones. That’s still quite a leap in a home robot.
Perhaps the company could take a more Vision Pro-like approach to the category, which focuses heavily on developer contributions. Doing so, however, would require a highly flexible hardware platform that would almost certainly be cost-prohibitive for most consumers, making the Vision Pro’s $3,500 price tag seem like small potatoes.