Apple has prototyped a lamp-like robot with lifelike movements 

As noted by MacRumors, Apple has prototyped a lamp-like robot with lifelike movements as shown in a post and video on the Apple Machine Learning Research website.

The video shows the non-anthropomorphic robot interacting with a human based on their hand gestures and more. It played music and helped with various tasks in addition to serving as, well, a lamp for illumination. 

Apple says its research shows that robots should move elegantly and use movement to express its internal states to humans during interaction. Apple says it conducted a user study to compare robot movements driving by expressive utilities against only functional ones in various task scenarios.

From Apple’s Machine Learning Research Page: 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. Using a research-through-design methodology, we document the hardware design process, define expressive movement primitives, and outline a set of interaction scenario storyboards. We propose a framework that incorporates both functional and expressive utilities during movement generation, and implement the robot behavior sequences in different function- and social- oriented tasks. Through a user study comparing expression-driven versus function-driven movements across six task scenarios, our findings indicate that expression-driven movements significantly enhance user engagement and perceived robot qualities. This effect is especially pronounced in social-oriented tasks.

The lamp robot prototype may hint at Apple’s long-term plans for a full line of robots. In an August 25 “Power On” newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said Apple has such plans.

Apple is still in the early stages of figuring out the best way to use robotics. Gurman says the test case will be a tabletop device codenamed J595 that brings together a large, iPad-like display with cameras and a base that features a robotic actuator. He says that such a product likely will arrive around 2026 or 2027, followed by mobile robots and possibly even humanoid models in the next decade.

Apple has long-range plans for a full line of robots, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports in his latest “Power On” newsletter.

Gurman says that, with robotics, Apple believes it can solve a series of problems:

Your device is only useful if you can reach it. There are many occasions when you might like to use your computer but it isn’t nearby — or your hands are otherwise occupied. Maybe you left a device in your home office, but now you’re in the kitchen or living room and need it. 
You may want to take photos of things or launch a videoconferencing session, but you’re not holding a device or sitting directly in front of it. 
You might want to operate or check something in your home while being out of the house. 

“Attaching a robotic limb to the iPad, for instance, will potentially make the device more useful for videoconferencing or browsing the web for recipes,” Gurman writes. “If you’re busy in the kitchen, it can swivel the screen around to face you. Someday, an Apple robot could go further. Apple has envisioned machines that can do household chores — like loading up a laundry machine or scrubbing down dirty plates — but that’s still so far in the future that the ideas don’t go beyond sketches on a whiteboard.”

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