Apple AI director talks advances in machine learning & mapping for self-driving car platfo...
Apple's director of AI research, Ruslan Salakhutdinov, gave peers a small glimpse into the company's self-driving platform this week, discussing some internal projects at the NIPS machine learning conference.
While one of the projects -- LiDAR object detection -- was detailed in a November research paper, Salakhutdinov also went into previously unpublicized areas, according to Wired. The company's camera-based recognition system, for instance, can discern objects even when lenses are obscured by rain, and identify pedestrians on the side of the road even when they're partially hidden by parked vehicles.
"If you asked me five years ago, I would be very skeptical of saying, 'Yes you could do that,'" Salakhutdinov commented.
The director also talked up Apple's work on dynamic decision making by cars -- such as how to avoid a pedestrian -- and its use of "SLAM," simultaneous localization and mapping, a technology some autonomous machines employ to maintain a sense of direction.
Apple was further said to be creating 3D maps of cities, including details like traffic lights and road markings. Some of this data is presumably being collected by Apple's autonomous test vehicles, but still more could be coming from the Apple Maps vehicles touring cities around the world, which the company has yet to fully explain.
The ultimate goal of Apple's efforts is unknown, but may involve a platform for ride-hailing services. Before then it should begin running its internal "PAIL" (Palo Alto to Infinite Loop) shuttle.
While one of the projects -- LiDAR object detection -- was detailed in a November research paper, Salakhutdinov also went into previously unpublicized areas, according to Wired. The company's camera-based recognition system, for instance, can discern objects even when lenses are obscured by rain, and identify pedestrians on the side of the road even when they're partially hidden by parked vehicles.
"If you asked me five years ago, I would be very skeptical of saying, 'Yes you could do that,'" Salakhutdinov commented.
The director also talked up Apple's work on dynamic decision making by cars -- such as how to avoid a pedestrian -- and its use of "SLAM," simultaneous localization and mapping, a technology some autonomous machines employ to maintain a sense of direction.
Apple was further said to be creating 3D maps of cities, including details like traffic lights and road markings. Some of this data is presumably being collected by Apple's autonomous test vehicles, but still more could be coming from the Apple Maps vehicles touring cities around the world, which the company has yet to fully explain.
The ultimate goal of Apple's efforts is unknown, but may involve a platform for ride-hailing services. Before then it should begin running its internal "PAIL" (Palo Alto to Infinite Loop) shuttle.
Comments
http://fortune.com/2016/03/13/cars-parked-95-percent-of-time/
Ride sharing and people not owning cars doesn't seem like it fits unless they made the whole car cabin a platform and the service was all the plugin and consumable parts that moved cabins from point A to B. So cabin could be self driving car, turn up to a hyperloop get loaded and be in another city for holidays with their own car and only packing once.
Apple’s DNA is a seamless user experience. They have been doing rental services for years, but because it is seamlessly wedded to their platform you may not have realised it.
Apple Music is a rental service.
iCloud storage is a rental service.
iTunes Match is a rental service.
You could even even argue that their iPhone upgrade program is a rental service.
BTW, Apple building their own car is more inline with their history (but I also don't see that happened), but what's not inline with their history is a built-in or aftermarket system for other vendors to use, at least not with HW. I think no matter what they do it'll be unique from all their CE efforts.
They’ll do anything else, I just don’t see them building their own car to sell to people because I don’t think Apple sees individual car sales as a long term prospect.
But sellng the system to other car manufacturers? Yup, why not? Using it to manage a rental fleet (their own or others)? Hell, yes.
And if Apple is about anything then it’s about change. Why do you think their “fans” scream so much? Apple’s history is about extending its ecosystem as far as possible.
What I don’t know is how this would work. I imagine that all AI car systems will be using similar hardware sensor kits, so does Apple need to supply the hardware?
To put another way, lets say Didi using a car from, say, Ford. You've stated that their Didi vehicle will use Apple's tech, which means an aftermarket solution or Apple also partnering with Ford to get this built-in. So why only do this through Didi as the ultimate goal? Why not allow anyone that wants to have Apple's tech get it? Your link to cars sitting idle 95% of the time is irrelevant since Apple isn't selling fuel. A sale is a sale. It would be like Apple limiting Apple Music sales to only those that listen to 20+ hours a week. It simply wouldn't be good business to deny everyone else, including those that want to listen for less than one hour a week.