Apple has a new development framework that can be used to turn your iPhone into an autonomous pet-tracking camera. According to documentation on Appleâs website, developers can use pet-tracking features with motorized phone stands to capture and follow your pet around your house while youâre not home.
As noted by Apple, developers can achieve this using a new framework called DockKit, which can create âphoto and video experiencesâ while an iPhone is mounted on a motorized stand. From there, devs can then use something called the Animal Body Pose API (application programming interface), which is capable of identifying and tracking animals with your phoneâs camera. Itâs able to identify a petâs pose, too, including if your pet is sitting down, standing up, or begging for food.
By combining DockKit with Animal Body Pose API, Apple says devs can create apps that âautomatically track subjects in live video across a 360-degree field of view, take direct control of the stand to customize framing, directly control the motors, and provide your own inference model for tracking other objects.â To be clear, pet-tracking isnât an official iOS 17 feature thatâs getting shipped by Apple, but the company is giving developers the tools they need to create and launch their own iPhone-powered pet cams. Apple plans on getting into more detail about all this in an upcoming session at its Worldwide Developers Conference.