Rare insight: How Apple breathes life into a smart lamp
Apple's smart lamp is not yet a finished product. However, research has already shown the impact of a gadget interacting naturally with a person.
While other companies exhibit prototypes at trade fairs to show what they are currently working on, Apple only presents finished products. The most that gets out of Cupertino are rumours. In a blog, the iPhone company is now providing an insight into its research department. Among other things, it is looking into the effects of a smart lamp adopting human behaviour and not just doing its job.
"Elegnt": a lamp with gestures
The smart lamp from Apple's research department makes me think of the lamp from the Pixar intros. Not only does it light up, but its sometimes subtle movements turn it into a character whose emotions can even be recognised.
Apple's lamp illuminates an area on command, follows a book or projects a video onto a wall. It can be operated using gestures or voice control and also answers questions. For people, however, it makes a big difference whether the lamp simply performs its task or becomes its own being through non-verbal behaviour such as gestures, posture or implied glances.
Yuhan Hu, Peide Huang, Mouli Sivapurapu and Jian Zhang from Apple's research department have been working on this question. They submitted their research as a scientific paper for a conference on interactive systems and summarised their findings in a video.
After watching the video, it's clear to me which smart lamp I want. There are no differences in the functions, but the one variant becomes more alive through its gestures and behaviour and is no longer a dead object. I immediately feel sorry for her when she hangs her head because she can't light up the piece of paper that is too far away. This is impressive and shows why such details are important and could ultimately ensure that an Apple product once again sells better than those of the competition.
Header image: Apple
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As a primary school pupil, I used to sit in a friend's living room with many of my classmates to play the Super NES. Now I get my hands on the latest technology and test it for you. In recent years at Curved, Computer Bild and Netzwelt, now at Digitec and Galaxus.
