Scientists At Apple Inc. (AAPL) Just Published Significant Self-Driving Research
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is notoriously secretive about its technological research.
The tech titan goes to great lengths to prevent any leaks about product information (although it’s been much worse at keeping new iPhone info bottled in recent years). That’s why this week’s news about Apple scientists publicly disclosing their autonomous driving research findings is so surprising.
Reuters has more details:
The paper by Yin Zhou and Oncel Tuzel, submitted on Nov. 17 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.
With the new software, engineers said they produced “highly encouraging results” in terms of identifying pedestrians and cyclists using only LiDAR data, which gathers information about surroundings using a pulsed laser, not cameras.
The development helps resurrect hope that Apple could one day launch a self-driving car of its own. The company was long rumored to be working on such a project, but reportedly scrapped it last year to concentrate solely on in-car software instead.
But other signs have emerged this year hinting of an Apple Car as well. While CEO Tim cook has called self-driving vehicles “the mother of all A.I. projects,” the company filed a self-driving car testing plan with regulators in California back in April. And just less than a year ago, Apple encouraged federal regulators not to restrict testing of self-driving cars, noting it was excited about the emerging technology.
Apple Inc. shares rose $0.36 (+0.21%) in premarket trading Wednesday. Year-to-date, AAPL has gained 51.89%, versus a 17.97% rise in the benchmark S&P 500 index during the same period.
AAPL currently has a StockNews.com POWR Ratingof A (Strong Buy), and is ranked #1 of 28 stocks in the Technology – Hardware category.
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