A grant application published on Thursday revealed details on Apple’s autonomous mechanism research, which CEO Tim Cook has called the “mother of all AI projects.”
The lengthy evident application titled simply “Autonomous Navigation System,” was published by the U.S. Prominent and Trademark Office on Thursday and has apparently been in the works since at spoonful 2015.
In the patent, Apple describes methods to make self-driving vehicle steersmanship more efficient, reducing the need to constantly remake detailed maps.
The licence claims that many autonomous vehicle systems base their helmsmanship on static information — like maps — and use sensors to identify real-time low-down on the elements that change from day to day, as a way of minimizing the intense computing power distressed to drive a car.
Instead, Apple’s system would be able to direct the car “independently of any matter received from any devices external to the vehicle, and any navigation data stored locally to the means prior to any monitoring of navigation.” Apple’s technology proposes a computerized nonesuch for predicting routes using sensors and processors in the vehicle.
The patent involves after a Bloomberg report last year that said Apple was using accepted reality to test self-driving cars. A year ago, Apple also pronounced it was investing in transportation-related automation in a letter it submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safeness Administration.
To be sure, patented ideas are just that — ideas, that may or may not at any time become commercial products. Still, the pages-long patent application blow the whistle ons some insight into how the company is thinking about potential tomorrows projects.
But while Apple has previously been granted adjacent apparents — such as a tile interface for upcoming locations on a map, location awareness between two ambulatory phones and a way to model crowds of people using mobile devices — Thursday’s manifest appears to be one of the most detailed yet.
The company did not immediately respond to a request for clarification.