Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,397,497) for a “solar invariant imaging system for object detection” in a vehicle.
Dennis Sellers for Apple World Today:
In the patent data, the tech giant notes that vehicle guidance systems, autonomous control systems, and passengers viewing a surrounding environment while operating a vehicle can all rely on imaging systems to improve vehicle operation.
Imaging systems can identify objects and track movement of the objects that may intersect an intended vehicle path.
MacDailyNews Take: This patented method looks to solve the problem of blown-out portions of imaging (blind spots due to sun glare, reflection, etc.) which is obviously something that has to be tackled for autonomous vehicles to be able to avoid objects inclusing other vehicles and pedestrians.
Soon it will detect 40,000,000 small frozen objects flying through the air, as well as the accumulation thereof on the ground. At that point, I’m sure we will hear “I’m sorry, John, conditions are not favorable for automatic driving.”
🙂
I think they will do better in snow than us actually.
Eventually…
Apple Cars. They will come with no cigarette lighter to power devices. Apple will instead sell extremely expensive custom batteries that charge on a proprietary interface in the glove compartment. They will make a zillion dollars off these batteries then when its time for Apple Car version 3, they will finally include the cigarette lighter and people will rush to trade in their Apple Car 1 models to get the new cigarette lighters. Other car manufacturers will scratch their heads wondering just what the hell they are doing wrong.