Apple granted patent for an ‘Autonomous Navigation System’ for a vehicle

Apple may have abandoned plans for an Apple Car, but it’s still being granted patents regarding vehicles. The latest is number US 11994865 B2 for an “Autonomous Navigation System.”

About the patent

The patent relates generally to autonomous navigation of a vehicle, and in particular to development and evaluation of an autonomous navigation route characterization which can be utilized by at least some portion of a vehicle to autonomously navigate the route.

In the patent Apple notes that the rise of interest autonomous navigation of vehicles, including automobiles, has resulted in a desire to develop autonomous navigation systems which can autonomously navigate (i.e., autonomously “drive”) a vehicle through various routes, including one or more roads in a road network, such as contemporary roads, streets, highways, etc. However, the tech giant says that systems which can enable autonomous navigation, also referred to as autonomous driving, of a vehicle “can be less than ideal.” Apparently, Apple thinks it can do better.

Summary of the patent

Here’s Apple’s abstract of the patent: “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”

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