Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Apple's chief executive has confirmed it is developing a self-driving car system.
But Tim Cook indicated that it is too soon to say whether it would license the tech to other carmakers or try to build its own vehicles.
His interview with the Bloomberg news agency yielded his most detailed comments about the project to date.
Until now, Apple had avoided publicly discussing its plans, although it had confirmed the scheme in US filings.
There had also been leaked details of a change in leadership of the car team, with veteran hardware specialist Bob Mansfield reportedly put in charge last year, as well as images of test vehicles being published on rumour sites.
"We're focusing on autonomous systems and clearly one purpose of autonomous systems is self-driving cars - there are others," Mr Cook told Bloomberg.
"And we sort of see it as the the mother of all AI [artificial intelligence] projects.
"It's probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.
"We'll see where it takes us. We're not saying from a product point of view where it will take us, but we are being straightforward that it's a core technology that we view as very important."
-- submitted from IRC
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Apple Executive Reveals More of Its Self-Driving Technology
Apple received a permit from the California DMV to test self-driving vehicles in April, and CEO Tim Cook confirmed his interest in such technology in June.
The scale and scope of any car project at Apple remains unclear. [Ruslan] Salakhutdinov didn't say how the projects he discussed Friday fit into any wider effort in automated driving, and a company spokesman declined to elaborate.
Salakhutdinov showed data from one project previously disclosed in a research paper posted online last month. It trained software to identify pedestrians and cyclists using 3-D scanners called lidars used on most autonomous vehicles.
Other projects Salakhutdinov discussed don't appear to have been previously disclosed. One created software that identifies cars, pedestrians, and the driveable parts of the road in images from a camera or multiple cameras mounted on a vehicle.
Salakhutdinov showed images demonstrating how the system performed well even when raindrops spattered the lens, and could infer the position of pedestrians on the sidewalk when they were partially screened by parked cars. He cited that last result as an example of recent improvements in machine learning for some tasks. "If you asked me five years ago, I would be very skeptical of saying 'Yes you could do that,'" he said.
Another project Salakhutdinov discussed involved giving software moving through the world a kind of sense of direction, a technique called SLAM, for simultaneous localization and mapping. SLAM is used on robots and autonomous vehicles, and also has applications in map building and augmented reality. A fourth project used data collected by sensor-laden cars to generate rich 3-D maps with features like traffic lights and road markings. Most prototype autonomous vehicles need detailed digital maps in order to operate. Salakhutdinov also mentioned work on making decisions in dynamic situations, a topic illustrated on his slides with a diagram of a car plotting a path around a pedestrian.
Also at The Verge.
Previously: Apple's Tim Cook Confirms Self-Driving Car Plans
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @01:33PM (1 child)
No 1/8" jack. Less space than a Suburban. Lame.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday June 16 2017, @06:53PM
And you have to get permission to give your friends a ride.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @01:55PM
The amount of system integration and all the government regulations that must be satisfied to produce a modern car is huge and trying to build a new engineering team to handle all the details is time consuming.
At the same time, FCA (Chrysler in Detroit) is on the verge of coming apart for business/management reasons. The engineering teams there are good, they are not the problem with the company. Perhaps Apple will bid for the Jeep or Dodge (minivan) divisions? I think the FCA breakup will be vehicle development and production plants a la carte.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @04:52PM (2 children)
Apple's car would only connect to iPods. And it would only use iFuel and only run on iRoads.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 16 2017, @05:48PM
And when it drives off a cliff Tim Cook will accuse the passengers of sitting in it wrong.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Friday June 16 2017, @11:16PM
Don't forget the proprietary charge port.
(Score: 1) by corey on Saturday June 17 2017, @01:06AM
Seems like automated cars are the flavour of the day for all these tech companies. Should just focus on their core products and leave the bandwagon alone.