Apple Research Paper Documents Anthropomorphic, Emotionally Expressive Robot Lamp, à la Pixar’s Luxo

New research published from Apple machine learning researchers Yuhan Hu, Peide Huang, Mouli Sivapurapu, Jian Zhang:

Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interaction. For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design should likewise integrate expressive qualities — such as intention, attention, and emotions — alongside traditional functional considerations like task fulfillment, spatial constraints, and time efficiency. In this paper, we present the design and prototyping of a lamp-like robot that explores the interplay between functional and expressive objectives in movement design.

I enjoyed seeing something Luxo-esque made real, and the paper itself is fairly readable — and worth skimming at least for the illustrations. But I’ll wait for an actual product to get excited. Unlike marketing concept videos, I don’t think publishing academic research is harmful to a company — and in fact, as has been much discussed regarding Apple’s institutional penchant for secrecy, it’s seemingly essential for Apple to not only permit but encourage this, to recruit top-tier talent in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. But publishing academic research is closer to publishing marketing concept videos than it is to releasing an actual product. Which is to say it doesn’t count.

★ Sunday, 16 February 2025