Apple recently released a striking paper showing its latest smart home product - an expressive AI companion lamp, or a desk lamp robot. It completely breaks the stereotype of traditional home appliances.
This desk lamp not only has lighting functions, but also interacts with users through a cute appearance, expresses "emotions" through a series of behaviors, and can complete a series of functional tasks and social tasks, such as photography lights, sensor night lights, project assistance, creative suggestions, and dancing while playing music. This innovative move has brought new concepts and experiences to the field of smart homes, heralding Apple's further exploration of device intelligence and user interaction.
According to Apple's machine learning research team, this desk lamp design incorporates a variety of advanced technologies. It is not just a traditional desk lamp, but also has built-in cameras, speakers, projectors, and laser sensors. It can sense the surrounding environment and the user's movements and sounds in real time, and can also achieve more information interaction through projection. This interaction can make the lamp "emotional" and enhance the human-computer interaction experience through expressive movements.
▲The composition and interaction form of the desk lamp robot For example, when the user plays music, it dances with the notes.
The innovation of this desk lamp is not limited to entertainment. In the study, the team demonstrated its intelligent performance in completing daily tasks. For example, when the researcher is busy at work, if she needs to drink water, the desk lamp will push the cup in front of her.
At the same time, when the user asks about the weather, the desk lamp will first "look" out the window and then give an answer. When told that they can't go hiking together, the desk lamp will also pretend to be sad and lower its head. This design significantly improves the user's interactive participation and favorability, especially in social tasks, the effect is doubled.
It is worth noting that this desk lamp can also provide learning assistance for users. When the researcher performs complex assembly operations, the desk lamp will not only adjust the lighting direction, but also display relevant installation videos through the projection function, and even correct the user's math homework to show the solution ideas.
It is reported that the paper proposes a framework called "ELEGNT" for designing practical and emotional actions for non-humanoid robots in daily interactions. The "ELEGNT" framework combines two design ideas:
● One is function-driven, focusing on allowing the desk lamp robot to complete tasks in the optimal path (such as moving to a certain position);
● The second is expression-driven, allowing the desk lamp robot to convey its "inner state" through actions, such as intention, attention, attitude or emotion, making the interaction more natural.
The Apple research team pointed out that traditional robots overemphasize efficiency, while this desk lamp allows users to perceive the "inner state" of the machine through "emotional resonance" and "intention visualization". For example, in the experiment, when the user mistakenly thought that he could not read the information, it would "shake its head and apologize" after many attempts, while the functional robot just coldly announced failure.
This expressive AI desk lamp companion lamp shows Apple's new ideas in the design of smart home products, indicating that it hopes to attract consumers by enhancing the interaction between devices and people, indicating that smart home products can not only realize basic functions, but also need to make reforms in emotional expression and user experience. For consumers, the future smart home is not only a tool, but also a companion and assistant. This transformation provides new ideas for the entire industry. In the future, smart devices will develop in a more humane and emotional direction, adding more convenience and fun to people's lives.
With the rapid development of the smart home market, Apple's new products have undoubtedly enhanced its competitiveness in this field. Market analysts pointed out that Apple's strong brand influence and product innovation capabilities will effectively promote its market share growth in the smart home field. And such developments may also prompt other technology companies to accelerate the innovation of smart home products to keep up with consumers' changing needs and expectations.
It is revealed that this desk lamp is still in the research stage, but its potential is exciting enough-in the future home, every corner may hide a "high EQ" housekeeper.