The nodding iPad is Apple’s latest smart home brainwave

Apple is reportedly working on a smart home display with a robotic arm, which moves the screen to mimic the head movements of FaceTime callers.

The bizarre-sounding screen is one of a series of smart home innovations that Apple is developing now that the Apple Vision Pro has been unleashed on to the market, according to renowned Apple watcher, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg.

Gurman describes the device as a “lightweight smart display” that is “akin to a low-end iPad”. The device could be moved from room to room and plugged into charging hubs around the home.

The device would presumably act as a smart home console, controlling other devices such as smart light bulbs, heating and speakers, in a similar fashion to Amazon’s Echo Hub or Google’s Nest Hub.

However, Apple’s device has an added robotic arm, allowing it to pull party tricks when the user is making FaceTime calls. “The arm could be used to mimic a human on the other side of a FaceTime call, shifting the screen to recreate a nod or a shake of the head,” Gurman writes in his weekly Power On newsletter.

Not everyone inside Apple is sold on the idea, however, with Gurman claiming that it “doesn’t have unified support from Apple’s executive team”. That might explain why it’s remained stuck in Apple’s labs for “several years”, according to Gurman.

Related: Apple “in talks with Google” over iPhone AI

Apple’s robotics push

It’s the second time in recent weeks that Apple has been linked with a push into robotics. The company is also reportedly working on a butler-like device that follows you around the home, as well as domestic robots that take on household cleaning chores.

Amazon has again beaten Apple to the punch with the robot-butler idea, with the company’s Astro robot already on sale, albeit only by invitation in select markets.

However, you should probably lower your expectations of any imminent iRobot release, with Gurman warning that these robot assistants are “probably a decade away”.

Apple’s home robot experiments are a signal that the company is searching for a new product category to maintain its explosive growth over the past 20 years. Macs revitalised the company in the mid-to-late 1990s, and products such as the iPod, iPad and (in particular) the iPhone have propelled its growth into one of the world’s biggest tech firms, but it’s struggled to carve out a lucrative product segment since.

The company recently abandoned its electric car project and gave up on smart TVs a decade ago. The Apple Vision Pro opens a new revenue stream for the firm, although this first incarnation is a niche product aimed at developers and well-heeled early adopters.

However, as we covered last month, it’s being used to aid surgeons too.