Apple’s ELEGNT framework could make home robots feel less like machines and more like companions - Related to could, foundational, ilk, apple’s, over

Apple’s ELEGNT framework could make home robots feel less like machines and more like companions

Apple researchers have developed a new framework for making non-humanoid robots move more naturally and expressively during interactions with people, potentially paving the way for more engaging robotic assistants in homes and workplaces.

The research, , introduces Expressive and Functional Movement Design ELEGNT, which allows robots to convey intentions, emotions and attitudes through their movements — rather than just completing functional tasks.

“For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design should integrate expressive qualities — such as intention, attention and emotions — alongside traditional functional considerations like task fulfillment, spatial constraints and time efficiency,” the researchers from Apple’s robotics team write in their research paper.

How a desk lamp became the perfect test subject for robot emotions.

The study focused on a lamp-like robot, reminiscent of Pixar’s animated Luxo Jr. character, equipped with a 6-axis robotic arm and a head containing a light and projector. The researchers programmed the robot with two types of movements: purely functional ones focused on completing tasks, and more expressive movements designed to communicate the robot’s internal state.

In user testing with 21 participants, the expressive movements significantly improved people’s engagement with and perception of the robot. This effect was especially pronounced during social tasks like playing music or engaging in conversation, although it was less impactful for purely functional tasks like adjusting lighting.

“Without the playfulness, I might find this type of interaction with a robot annoying rather than welcome and engaging,” noted one study participant, highlighting how expressive movements made even potentially intrusive robot behaviors more acceptable.

A visual guide showing the expressive movement vocabulary developed for the lamp-like robot, including basic gestures and spatial behaviors. (Credit: Apple).

User testing reveals age gap in robot movement preferences.

The research comes as major tech companies increasingly explore home robotics. While most current home robots like robot vacuums focus purely on function, this work indicates that adding more natural, expressive movements could make future robots more appealing companions.

However, the researchers note that balance is crucial. “There needs to be a balance between engagement through motion and speed completion of the task being given, otherwise the human might grow impatient,” one participant observed.

The study also found that older participants were significantly less receptive to expressive robot movements, suggesting that robot behavior may need to be customized based on user preferences.

The robot’s capabilities span from functional tasks like providing reading light to social interactions such as creative suggestions and playful companionship. (Credit: Apple).

The future of social robotics: Finding the sweet spot between function and expression.

While Apple rarely discusses its robotics research publicly, this work offers intriguing hints about how the tech giant might approach future home robots. The study points to a fundamental shift in robotics design: Instead of focusing solely on what robots can do, companies must consider how robots make people feel.

The challenge ahead lies not just in programming robots to complete tasks, but in making their presence welcome in our most intimate spaces. As robots transition from factory floors to living rooms, their success may depend less on raw efficiency and more on their ability to read the room — both literally and metaphorically.

Apple’s paper will be presented at the 2025 Designing Interactive Systems conference in Madeira this July.

The results point to a future where robot design requires as much input from animators and behavioral psychologists as it does from engineers.

As robots become more common in homes and workplaces, making them move in ways that feel natural rather than mechanical could be the difference between another forgotten gadget and a truly indispensable companion. The real test will be whether companies like Apple can translate these research insights into products that people not only use, but genuinely want to interact with.

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Why TCS, Wipro & The Ilk Fancy Agentic AI Over Foundational Models

However, Industry experts believe that it does not make sense for these companies to make big investments in developing foundational models.

Their GenAI strategy revolves around fine-tuning small language models, developing generative AI agents, and optimising workflows rather than creating truly novel AI architectures or training frontier models from scratch.

Companies like Infosys, TCS, and Wipro are integrating GenAI into their services but are not developing foundational AI models.

Liang Wenfeng was not a well-known face, at least outside China, until January 2025. He laid the foundation for one of China’s largest hedge funds in 2015 by leveraging data analytics for trading, instead of human intervention.

By 2021, the fund managed a portfolio of over $[website] Bn. However, in 2022, when the US brought in the CHIPS Act – effectively restricting the export of high-performance computing power to China – Wenfeng decided to make a strategic pivot. In 2023, his fund shifted its focus beyond the investment industry to concentrate its resources on artificial general intelligence (AGI).

A month later, DeepSeek was born. The organization has now taken the tech world by storm, with its latest generative AI (GenAI) reasoning models being unveiled to be as good as that of OpenAI.

This raises an essential question: What’s stopping India from replicating the same success? Can Indian IT giants – consistently generating profits in thousands of crores – not allocate significant resources toward developing the much sought-after foundational generative AI (GenAI) models?

It’s worth noting that Infosys was among the first few companies globally to invest in GenAI. The company co-invested in OpenAI, alongside Elon Musk, in its early R&D phase. At the time, Vishal Sikka was at the helm of Infosys. However, he unceremoniously quit the company in 2018.

There is a general perception that the Indian IT behemoths were late in hopping on to the GenAI bandwagon and they should have built foundational models. This debate was reignited after the launch of latest models by DeepSeek and AI search engine Perplexity’s India-origin cofounder and CEO Aravind Srinivas publicly saying that Indian companies should focus on training their models from scratch. However, instead of building foundational models, Indian IT companies have decided to build applications on top of the existing models to ride on the GenAI boom.

With the increasing usage and new developments in the GenAI space, the ongoing Q3 earnings season saw the IT companies spell out their current and future plans for the technology. Let’s take a detailed look.

GenAI found a number of mentions in the post-earnings calls of the IT giants this quarter, and it was clear that these companies are most bullish on agentic AI.

“It’s (GenAI) getting more real. The cost of using LLMs or conversational AI models are reducing. It has dropped more than 85% since early 2023, making more use cases viable,” showcased C Vijayakumar, the CEO of HCL Tech.

Meanwhile, Infosys chief Salil Parekh expressed that the organization is building over 100 GenAI agents for client applications in collaboration with its AI partner ecosystem. However, he didn’t reveal how the organization is developing these agents.

Echoing a similar sentiment, TCS CEO K Krithivasan noted that “agentic AI represents the next step of maturity in the exponentially evolving space of AI”. He added that TCS, too, is now moving past the initial wave of chatbots and deployment of LLMs.

, GenAI agents or agentic AI are software that can do complex tasks and meet objectives with little or no human supervision. In December last year, we, at Inc42, mentioned in our predictions for 2025 that agentic AI will bring the next major shift in the GenAI ecosystem.

If there were any suspicions that Indian IT companies might decide to build foundational models for GenAI, then the statements from the top officials of these companies put such suspicions to rest. These companies are focusing on building vertical AI solutions on top of existing models and they believe that this presents a big enough opportunity for them to grow their top and bottom lines.

Infosys, for instance, has developed a suite of GenAI-powered services and solutions under Infosys Topaz, which aims to integrate AI across various industries.

The business has also built four small language models (SLMs) for banking, IT operations, cybersecurity, and general enterprise use, each with [website] Bn parameters and trained on proprietary datasets. These SLMs have reportedly been built on the open-source models of Meta–Llama.

Elaborating on AI use cases at Infosys, Parekh expressed that the business is not doing any AI “whitewashing” but doing some real GenAI work. Infosys sees GenAI as a “real, scalable opportunity, not just a proof of concept”, he added.

The firm stated it has also designed a research agent to help a “large technology firm’s” product support teams generate solutions more efficiently. Further, three audit agents were also developed by the firm for a “professional services firm” to automate tasks and reduce errors, and a custom small language model for a “telecommunications client” to address industry-specific challenges.

Beyond client deployments, Infosys also asserts to be leveraging GenAI internally. It is using small and large language models for software development, customer service, and knowledge management.

One key initiative is integrating AI into Finacle, Infosys’ core banking solution, to streamline processes and enhance decision-making.

Meanwhile, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), too, introduced that the technology presents a big opportunity and it’s making investments to expand its AI and GenAI capabilities.

The organization stated it has developed a unified contact centre platform integrating chat and IVR systems for one of its major clients. This platform uses advanced natural language processing to improve customer engagement, streamline workflows, and provide real-time analytics. The system supports over 30,000 daily chat conversations and has improved intent identification accuracy while reducing live agent transfers.

In the life sciences segment, the Tata-backed IT giant claimed to have collaborated with a “pharmaceutical corporation” to accelerate cancer drug discovery. Using GenAI, it designed small molecules optimised for drug-like properties based on target protein structures, generating 1,300 candidate molecules.

Besides, “a major global bank” partnered with TCS to develop a real-time fraud detection solution, replacing its legacy system. The AI-powered system analyses transaction behaviour anomalies, assigns risk scores, and has improved fraud detection rates by 18 percentage points while reducing false positives by 25%.

TCS also points to to be working with a “semiconductor business” to co-develop foundational AI technologies, including multi-core server CPUs, GPUs, and AI-based systems. Additionally, the business is assisting clients in building and benchmarking large language models while advancing AI quantisation techniques.

HCL Tech and Wipro are also aggressively positioning themselves as AI-driven IT service providers, but their focus remains on applying AI rather than building it from scratch.

For instance, HCL Tech, in its Q3 results, noted it has partnered with hyperscalers (companies that build data centres) to leverage the emerging technology for operational efficiency and process automation. Besides, its AI Force platform and agentic AI solutions focus on enhancing IT operations, regulatory processes, and enterprise workflows.

Similarly, Wipro is betting on AI-driven consulting with industry solutions like WealthAI and Cloud Car Ecosystem, which aims to develop software-defined vehicles. While it is investing in AI education and training 50,000 employees in AI certifications, Wipro’s efforts, too, largely revolve around enhancing services rather than advancing AI research.

What’s Driving This Push For Low-Hanging Fruits?

India’s IT industry has built a strong reputation over the decades by offering affordable and high-quality SaaS solutions and other services to enterprises across the world. As such, investing a small percentage of their bottom lines into GenAI was a low-hanging fruit for them.

Their GenAI strategy revolves around fine-tuning small language models, developing generative AI agents, and optimising workflows rather than creating truly novel AI architectures or training frontier models from scratch.

Even when homegrown IT giants claim to be working on “foundational AI technologies,” the specifics remain vague, with an emphasis on assisting clients rather than independently driving AI breakthroughs.

Industry experts believe that it does not make sense for these companies to make big investments in developing foundational models. There are several reasons behind this.

First, there is a lack of substantial investment in GenAI research in India. In contrast to the US and the Chinese governments’ aggressive funding for foundational AI research, India’s policy framework for AI development remains underdeveloped.

“Unless IT firms are explicitly paid to build a foundational model, it’s unlikely they will pursue it. The challenges, investments, and effort required to build, maintain, and market such a model often outweigh the perceived benefits,” mentioned Aditya Kumbakonam, COO and cofounder of AI and analytics organization MathCo.

Abhay Nawathey, cofounder and CTO of [website], echoed similar sentiment. “While India possesses robust technological capabilities and a skilled IT workforce, the development of foundational GenAI models faces a critical bottleneck. The absence of a research-centric ecosystem, coupled with insufficient funding mechanisms, has created a gap between potential and execution,” expressed the CTO of [website], which is an AI-powered lead generation platform.

However, Pranav Pai, the founding partner of 3one4 Capital, believes that the Indian companies are playing a key role in increasing the adoption of GenAI.

“As the world’s largest enterprises start their use of AI, these IT companies will help lead the system transitions to these AI products among their enterprise end-clients. Many of these AI companies will become more valuable than the IT companies, just like many other software products and platforms have,” expressed Pai.

He also believes that the Indian IT industry as well as Indian startups, developing vertical AI solutions, will benefit immensely from the rising global spending on GenAI.

This approach of spending a small amount of capital to build solutions on top of foundational models seems to have percolated into the Indian startup ecosystem as well, with founders and investors prioritising easy and fast returns on investments rather than building something from scratch.

Nevertheless, the Indian government seems to have risen to the occasion with the announcement of plans to develop an indigenously built AI foundational model in partnership with private enterprises. While homegrown IT companies have so far been less inclined to allocate resources toward creating foundational models, it remains to be seen if the Centre’s support and incentives pave the way for the country spearheading the AI revolution and product economy or will it remain in the services rut?

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You can officially download the TikTok app again on Android phones

Table of Contents Table of Contents A safer approach What happens next?

The TikTok app has not returned to the Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store, ever since it went dark in the US with a ban looming over its head. That means fresh downloads are not possible on Android and Apple smartphones. Things have finally eased, at least for Android fans.

The official TikTok website now lists the software package that lets consumers download the app directly, instead of an app repository such as the Google Play Store. Third-party websites have hosted the app’s software bundle for a while, but that route usually comes with the risk of malware.

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At the moment, you can download the full version of the app, or the Lite version, which takes up less storage space. The biggest advantage of installing the TikTok app from the firm’s official web dashboard is that it’s safe and doesn’t come with any safety caveats.

If it’s your first time downloading an app from a web browser, you might have to grant a one-time trust permission to install the package from that source. Once you agree, the TikTok application will be installed on your Android phone without any issues.

The only hassle is that if an app is not available via the Google Play Store, it becomes cumbersome to seed the latest updates. That means missing out on, or slowing down, new functions and security patches to plug vulnerabilities.

There is no clarity, however, when TikTok will return to Google or Apple’s app repositories. One reason could be the massive penalty. App stores and service providers could be fined up to $5,000 per person for violation.

With a few thousand downloads, you are looking at fines worth millions of dollars. TikTok is in the safe zone. For now. Merely a day after a nationwide ban was enforced, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that delayed a blanket US ban for 75 days.

It is unclear what happens once that deadline arrives. There are rumors of a US-based entity taking over TikTok’s local business, with names like Oracle, Microsoft, and even Elon Musk appearing in reports.

A sale may not be as seamless as a simple transfer of ownership for local operations. In fact, the parent organization, ByteDance, might possibly put the whole endeavor on cold ice, leaving the US market for good.

“But Beijing is increasingly likely to take a hard-line approach, letting TikTok’s [website] operations die rather than approving a sale as it holds out for a “grand deal” with the Trump administration that includes larger concessions on trade and tech policy, ,” says a study from The Washington Post.

On the audience side, the frenzy is real. While Android customers have finally received some official respite, there is no such relief in sight for iPhone customers. Apple doesn’t allow app installation from any source other than its App Store, unless you live in the EU.

That leaves iPhone customers in the US without a path for downloading TikTok. The situation got so desperate that used iPhones with the TikTok app pre-installed popped up on online sales platforms for as high as fifty thousand dollars apiece.

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