Apple granted patent for an autonomous navigation system

Let the Apple Car rumors roll on. Apple has been granted another patent (number 10,451,425) for an “autonomous navigation system.”

In the patent background info, Apple 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 various routes, including one or more roads in a road network, such as contemporary roads, streets, highways, etc. 

However, systems which can enable autonomous navigation, also referred to as autonomous driving, of a vehicle can be less than ideal. Among the problems, per Apple, are the time and money required to develop such a system based on road data that can change over time. The company thinks it has a better solution.

Here’s the summary of the patent: “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.”

Of course, Apple files for — and is granted — lots of patents by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Many are for inventions that never see the light of day. However, you never can tell which ones will materialize in a real product.