Let the Apple Car rumors roll on. Apple has been granted a patent (number 10,800,416) for a “vehicle control system.”
In the patent data, Apple notes that automated vehicle control systems are being developed that take on more and more of the work of maneuvering a vehicle. Automated vehicle control systems are able to access and integrate a wealth of information that is practically unavailable to human operators, such as data from a variety of sensors or communications received from other vehicles or traffic control systems, which fundamentally changes the vehicle control problem and provides an opportunity to automatically maneuver vehicles in a far safer and more efficient manner.
Apple says that, however, “the real world is highly complex and it is challenging to design automated control systems that can robustly handle the wide variety of scenarios that may be encountered on a road with other automated and/or human operated vehicles.” The tech giant wants to change this. How? By using systems and methods for automated control of vehicle lane change maneuvers. Implementations may include
° Detecting, based on data from a sensor in the first vehicle, one or more other vehicles that are moving in a target lane of the road.
° Determining, based on the kinematic state of the vehicle and a prediction of motion of the one or more other vehicles in the target lane, estimates of headway in relation to at least one of the one or more other vehicles in the target lane.
° Determining, based at least in part on the estimates of headway, overtake decisions for the one or more other vehicles traveling in the target lane.
° Determining a motion plan that will transition the first vehicle from the current lane to the target lane based the overtake decisions.
Despite various “Apple Car” patents, I still don’t think Apple will ever make its own automobile from scratch, but will team up with another car manufacturer (or perhaps more than one) to implement its various automotive technologies.
