Recently, Apple applied to the United States Patent and Trademark Office for a patent related to the automobile autonomous navigation system (ANS), which can handle lanes, road signs, the positions of other vehicles, the current positions of pedestrians and so on. , so as to realize the automatic driving function to a certain extent.
It is reported that this system (ANS) can collect all kinds of information about static features (lanes and road signs) and dynamic features (such as the position and movement trend of other vehicles and pedestrians on the route, environmental conditions, road obstacles, etc.). ) Understand the external environment of the vehicle in real time through the automatic navigation system, and then issue instructions to control the driving of the vehicle.
In fact, such an automatic driving assistance function is not new at present. Similar functions can be seen on Tesla's AutoPilot and Baidu's Apollo. Both Tesla and Baidu put this autopilot assistance on the real vehicle for testing and running. Baidu also specially launched a driverless taxi for this purpose.
Not long ago, Huawei also launched the smart car solution brand HI, intending to enter the field of smart cars and autonomous driving, and cooperated with Volvo to launch the first HMS? For what? Volvo XC40 for cars? Recharge, and quite interestingly, the car was previously equipped with Google's smart car system, which shows the fierce competition in this market.
In fact, it is not an idea for Apple to enter the automotive field now. As early as 20 13, Apple proposed "iOS? Are you online? That? Car "plan, announced to enter the automotive field, later renamed" CarPlay ",and launched the" Titan Plan? Titan) said that it is necessary to create a brand-new model that completely subverts the automobile industry, and also let the industry exclaim that the giants are coming.
However, Apple's road to building a car is not smooth. Now CarPlay has been widely used in vehicle-mounted machines, which is two points different from Baidu CarLife, but Apple's car has never been seen. Apple, which has no experience in building cars, has been wavering for a long time on the issue of building cars or making software. It was not until 20 17 obtained the California self-driving car test license that it was finally decided that the research and development direction was mainly autonomous driving.
But Apple seems to have a "car-building complex" and has not given up building a car. In August of 20 18, 46 employees who used to work for Tesla were dug away. By the end of 20 19, Apple had poached about 500 people from Tesla and 170 people from Foton Motor.
Up to now, Apple has published more than 70 related patents, including in-vehicle systems, autonomous driving, motors, suspension systems, vehicle navigation and so on. CarPlay has been widely used in the automobile industry. It seems that it may be a matter of time before Apple builds a car.
This article comes from car home, the author of the car manufacturer, and does not represent car home's position.