Apple’s next big thing is a tabletop iPad on a robot arm?

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Apple is reportedly ramping up work on a tabletop computer that’s essentially an iPad on a robot arm that can rotate and tilt the tablet to keep it facing the user.

This might be the source of previous rumors of a HomePod with a large screen.

An early iPad robot could be on Apple’s drawing board

Apple makes desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, watches, headphones and much more. But it does not make robots — at least not consumer models. (Apple does make robots that disassemble iPhones, among other manufacturing and recycling tasks.) That’s apparently changing, though, with a first step into home robotics in development.

“The company now has a team of several hundred people working on the device, which uses a thin robotic arm to move around a large screen,” Bloomberg‘s Mark Gurman reported Wednesday.

This is supposedly not going to be a robot as many people envision one. It’ll lack legs or wheels, and will stay stationary on a kitchen counter, table or desk. But it’ll include an iPad on a robotic arm that uses “actuators to tilt the display up and down and make it spin 360 degrees,” according to Gurman, who is noted for having generally reliable sources willing to leak information from within Apple.

The rumored Apple robot seems similar to an iPad version of the Belkin Auto-Tracking Stand Pro, a desktop stand that uses Apple’s DockKit system to keep an iPhone pointed at a user.

A centerpiece for a smart home

“The device is envisioned as a smart home command center, videoconferencing machine and remote-controlled home security tool,” Gurman wrote, citing anonymous Apple insiders. “The project — codenamed J595 — was approved by Apple’s executive team in 2022 but has started to formally ramp up in recent months.”

That’s what many people expected after earlier leaks about a HomePod with a large screen, though the upcoming device reportedly will run a version of iPadOS. The feature not leaked before about the product is the ability to move itself.

“The device could respond to commands, such as ‘look at me,’ by repositioning the screen to focus on the person saying the words — say, during a video call. It also could understand different voices and adjust its focus accordingly,” according to the report.

The product is apparently in an early stage of development — it’s not expected to reach customers before 2026 or 2027. The price tag will be around $1,000, which is roughly what premium iPad models without robot arms sell for.

Home robotics is a market Apple is exploring as it searches for new growth possibilities. It’s quite possible the iPad-on-an-arm will be only the first in a new product line. Cupertino reportedly even considered building a full-fledged mobile robot.