Apple: Releases Pixar lamp on the market

Anyone who has seen this lamp before also knows where it comes from. It looks very similar to the Pixar lamp. This lively desk lamp is very well known at Pixar and even serves as the company's mascot.

Apple's development engineers have combined this iconic image of a communicative desk lamp with the real development of a new smart home device. The concept is called “Elegnt” and is described as “expressive and functional motion design for non-anthropomorphic robots”. In a video, they present the prototype in two variants. The lamp can react directly to commands and is designed to be strictly functional.

Apple's goal with the lamp is to analyze non-verbal behavior such as posture, gestures and glances in order to understand how people interact with robots. Machines should learn to recognize intentions and react appropriately to human actions.

The video shows six tasks to be performed

https://video.golem.de/wissens...

Researchers present their results

The lamp's reaction shows significantly less movement than the expressive setting. According to the researchers' observations, the variant in which the emotional gesture is made in response is perceived as more capable, since the robot interacts better with people through gestures.Apple does not currently offer any robots! It was only in the summer of 2024 that there were indications that Apple was working on a table robot. At the time, however, it was said that it was not a desk lamp, but a tablet-like screen attached to a robotic arm. The device was not expected to be launched until 2026 at the earliest.