“Mark Rober, who is best known for his YouTube videos of spectacular science stunts, has been quietly working as an engineer for Apple’s secretive special projects group, Variety has learned,” Janko Roettgers reports for Variety. “Rober’s work for Apple includes contributions to the company’s virtual reality projects, with a focus on using VR as on-board entertainment for self-driving cars.”
“Rober, who has close to 3.4 million YouTube followers and has been an occasional guest on ‘The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon,’ changed jobs in the summer of 2015, according to his Linkedin profile,” Roettgers reports. “The profile currently states that he has been working as a product design engineer at an unnamed company ever since.”
“Some patent applications filed by Apple this spring give us an idea of what Rober has been working on: In March, Apple filed a patent application for an ‘immersive virtual display’ as well as one for an ‘augmented virtual display,'” Roettgers reports. “Both describe VR systems that could be used by passengers of self-driving cars, who ostensibly weren’t needed to observe traffic anymore… Apple’s AR/VR efforts and its work on autonomous cars have long been closely related. Case in point: Munich-based AR startup Metaio, which Apple acquired in 2015, had been working with several car manufacturers, including Audi, BMW and Ferrari.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Plus whatever’s being developed likely doesn’t have to be confined to vehicles. See: Apple Glasses.
SEE ALSO:
Gene Munster: Apple will release Apple Glasses late in 2021 – May 17, 2018
Apple patent application reveals work on eye-tracking technology for VR and AR headsets – April 27, 2018
Apple prepping Micro-LED displays for Apple Watch and Smartglasses for 2019, sources say – April 3, 2018
Apple CEO Cook on the future of fashion, shopping, and AR smartglasses – October 11, 2017
Apple’s AR smartglasses – understanding the issues – August 29, 2017
Bernstein: Apple’s ‘smartglasses’ opportunity ‘could be enormous’ – August 25, 2017
Apple working on several prototypes of AR glasses – August 4, 2017
Apple’s next big move: Augmented reality – August 3, 2017
Apple’s rumored new glasses will be an even bigger deal than the iPhone – July 28, 2017
Apple smart glasses are inevitable – July 28, 2017
Secretly?
Mark Rober is brilliant. This is a YUGE win.