Audemars Piguet’s New AI Watch Box Takes the Perpetual Calendar Further

Audemars Piguet surprised collectors earlier this year when it introduced the Royal Oak Perpetual Calendar with the new Calibre 7138, a movement designed so that every correction – date, day, month, moonphase, leap year – could be done through a single crown. That alone was a major shift. No more pin-pushers. No more hidden correctors. Just one crown that could handle an entire perpetual calendar without risking the delicate mechanism. For most brands that would be enough innovation for a decade.

Audemars Piguet decided to keep going and handed that crown to a robot.

The brand has been quietly developing an intelligent watch box that doesn’t just wind the perpetual calendar but also reads it, interprets it, and sets it by itself. The device was co-developed with Dubai Future Labs and looks at first like a high-end winder. Once active, it behaves more like a miniature watchmaker. A camera inside the lid captures the dial, an AI model analyzes the position of every hand and indicator, and robotics take over from there. The system winds the movement, pulls the crown, selects the right crown position, and turns it the exact number of degrees needed to bring the watch in sync with real-world time. The owner simply places the watch into the cradle and confirms the action through a companion app that receives updates via Bluetooth.

For collectors, this solves a real problem. Perpetual calendars are famously sensitive. Setting one incorrectly or at the wrong moment in its cycle can lead to expensive repairs, which is why so many sit unworn in safes. The Calibre 7138 already made things safer by consolidating everything into the crown, but it still required careful handling. The new box eliminates that anxiety. Someone who wears their perpetual calendar occasionally can let it stop for weeks and trust the system to reset everything – day, date, month, leap year and moonphase – in one clean automated run.

There’s also an engineering story behind the scenes. A device like this would have been impossible with older Royal Oak perpetual calendars, which relied on tiny recessed pushers scattered around the case. A robot couldn’t operate those cleanly or safely. The redesign of the movement and the creation of the intelligent box are intertwined. One exists because the other made it feasible.

Audemars Piguet is positioning this project not as a gimmick but as an actual tool. The robotics must mimic the gentle pressure of human fingers, avoid marking the crown, and maintain precise torque over many years. It went through multiple prototypes before reaching the version now being shown publicly. And despite the use of AI, the system runs locally rather than relying on cloud servers, avoiding latency and privacy concerns. Everything happens within the device.

It also signals an interesting direction for haute horlogerie. Traditional watchmaking and modern robotics have often been framed as opposites – one handmade and timeless, the other digital and automated. This project suggests they can coexist in a way that respects both. The watch remains fully mechanical, finished by hand, and built to last decades. The accessory simply takes over the one part collectors fear most: setting a complication that is notoriously unforgiving.

The intelligent box is still a prototype, and the brand hasn’t announced pricing or availability, though it plans to bring it to market. When it arrives, it will likely become the most unusual yet practical accessory a perpetual calendar owner can have. Instead of dreading the ritual of correction, the owner can leave that responsibility to a machine designed with the same precision mindset as the watch itself.

For a complication built to track time flawlessly across leap years and decades, it’s fitting that its newest companion is designed to do the same – quietly, precisely, and without ever touching a pusher.