Let the Apple Car rumors roll on. Apple has filed for a patent (number 20200049515) for an “autonomous navigation system.”
In the patent filing, the tech giant notes that the rise of interest autonomous navigation of vehicles, including automobiles, has resulted in a desire to develop autonomous navigation systems that can autonomously navigate a vehicle through roads, streets, highways, etc. However, Apple says that such systems “can be less than ideal.”
In some cases, autonomous navigation is enabled via an autonomous navigation system that can process and respond to static features (e.g., roadway lanes, road signs, etc.) and dynamic features (present locations of other vehicles in a roadway on which the route extends, present environmental conditions, roadway obstructions, etc.) along a route in real-time as they are encountered, replicating the real-time processing and driving capabilities of a human being.
However, Apple says the processing and control capabilities required to simulate such processing and responsive capability can be impractical, if technically feasible. The tech giant adds that the complexity and magnitude of computer systems required to be included in a vehicle to enable such real-time processing and responsiveness can present an “unsuitably excessive investment in capital costs for each vehicle, thereby rendering the system impractical for usage on a wide scale.”
In other cases, autonomous navigation is enabled by developing a detailed map of various routes, including data indicating various features of the road (e.g., road signs, intersections, etc.), specifying various driving rules relative to the various routes (e.g., proper speed limits, lane changing speeds, lane locations, variations of driving rules based on various climate conditions and times of day, etc. for a given portion of a given route). The system provides the map to autonomous navigation systems of various vehicles to enable the vehicles to autonomously navigate the various routes using the map.
However, Apple says development of such a map can require extensive expenditures of time and effort to develop a map characterizing multiple routes, particularly when the multiple routes span over some or all of the roadways in a major city, region, nation, etc. In addition, as roadways can change over time, e.g. due to road construction, accidents, weather, seasonal occurrences, etc. such a map can unexpectedly become obsolete and unusable for safe autonomous navigation of a route.
Apple thinks it has a better solution. Here’s the summary of the invention: “Some embodiments provide an autonomous navigation system which enables autonomous navigation of a vehicle along one or more portions of a driving route based on monitoring, at the vehicle, various features of the route as the vehicle is manually navigated along the route to develop a characterization of the route.
“The characterization is progressively updated with repeated manual navigations along the route, and autonomous navigation of the route is enabled when a confidence indicator of the characterization meets a threshold indication. Characterizations can be updated in response to the vehicle encountering changes in the route and can include a set of driving rules associated with the route, where the driving rules are developed based on monitoring the navigation of one or more vehicles of the route. Characterizations can be uploaded to a remote system which processes data to develop and refine route characterizations and provide characterizations to one or more vehicles.”
