Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News – 22-11-2017

Technology company Apple’s scientists have released research on how self-driving cars can better spot cyclists and pedestrians while using fewer sensors.

The research posted on line appears to be the company’s first publicly disclosed paper on autonomous vehicles.

Reuters reports that the paper by Yin Zhou and Oncel Tuzel, submitted on 17 November to independent online journal arXiv, is significant because Apple’s famed corporate secrecy around future products has been seen as a drawback among artificial intelligence and machine learning researchers.

The scientists proposed a new software approach called “VoxelNet” for helping computers detect three-dimensional objects.

Self-driving cars often use a combination of normal two-dimensional cameras and depth-sensing “LiDAR” units to recognize the world around them.

While the units supply depth information, their low resolution makes it hard to detect small, faraway objects without help from a normal camera linked to it in real time.

But with new software, the Apple researchers said they were able to get “highly encouraging results” in spotting pedestrians and cyclists with just LiDAR data.

Though Chief Executive Tim Cook has called self-driving cars “the mother of all AI projects,” Apple has given few hints about the nature of its self-driving car ambitious.

Last December, Apple told federal regulators it was excited about the technology and asked regulators not to restrict testing of the technology.

In April, Apple filed a self-driving car testing plan with California. 

Twitter: @FaizelPatel143