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Apple Scientists Disclose Self-Driving Car Research (reuters.com)
Apple's first publicly disclosed paper on autonomous vehicles has been posted online by the company's computer scientists. The research describes a new software approach called "VoxelNet" that helps computers detect three-dimensional objects like cyclists and pedestrians while using fewer sensors. Reuters reports: The paper by Yin Zhou and Oncel Tuzel, submitted on Nov. 17 to independent online journal arXiv, is significant because Apple's famed corporate secrecy around future products has been seen as a drawback among artificial intelligence and machine learning researchers. The scientists proposed a new software approach called "VoxelNet" for helping computers detect three-dimensional objects.
Self-driving cars often use a combination of normal two-dimensional cameras and depth-sensing "LiDAR" units to recognize the world around them. While the units supply depth information, their low resolution makes it hard to detect small, faraway objects without help from a normal camera linked to it in real time. But with new software, the Apple researchers said they were able to get "highly encouraging results" in spotting pedestrians and cyclists with just LiDAR data. They also wrote they were able to beat other approaches for detecting three-dimensional objects that use only LiDAR. The experiments were computer simulations and did not involve road tests.
Self-driving cars often use a combination of normal two-dimensional cameras and depth-sensing "LiDAR" units to recognize the world around them. While the units supply depth information, their low resolution makes it hard to detect small, faraway objects without help from a normal camera linked to it in real time. But with new software, the Apple researchers said they were able to get "highly encouraging results" in spotting pedestrians and cyclists with just LiDAR data. They also wrote they were able to beat other approaches for detecting three-dimensional objects that use only LiDAR. The experiments were computer simulations and did not involve road tests.
Please avoid that truck.
"I'm sorry, but I don't understand 'a droid aruck.'"
#DeleteChrome
That's interesting.. Apple is doing a computer simulation of a self-driving car while Google is testing self driving cars without safety drivers in Arizona.
What if there are more cyclists in your way than the number of BFG rounds?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Tesla decided to forego the holy trinity of camera/radar/lidar for their system---in contrast with all of the established automakers.
Maybe they do have better engineers. At least in this particular niche.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Sounds like standard MO for Apple, get into the market that already has been tested, defined, and has promise of revenue. Hopefully they will do what we used are to - simplify and bring it to the people.
Splash damage my good fellow, splash damage!
Microwave transmitters do not emit ionizing radiation. Early Klystron based generators did produce X-Rays, but they were largely superseded by designs which did not produce X-Rays as this is a loss of useful output power/transmission inefficiency.
Regardless, in terms of danger; 25mW/cm^2 is where you start feeling heat on your skin after several minutes. Pain is at 1W/cm^2. Burning (ie skin temperature going above 42C) happens at 2.5W/cm^2 but that usually takes 5 minutes or more of exposure.
Radar systems used in cars typically have an output level of 10mW at the source - this decreases as the square of the distance.
A million cars != a million "ionising radiation units". Or maybe they do as I'm assuming "ionising" is a spelling mistake.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I wonder how a self driving car could fit in Apple line of products.
...near unidimensional targets^H^H^H^H^H^H objects ? What does Apple car do when this crosses a road ?
In the usual Apple way.
It will cost even more than a Tesla and be even more stylish and minimalist (probably looking like a giant round bubble of brushed aluminium and gorilla glass).
But apple fan will flock to it and buy it anyway because the iCar has an apple logo on it.
All the while the press will praise Apple for revolutionizing the transport industry completely, by being the inventors of self-driving pilotless cars. And of electric drive cars. And of cars all together.
(Though they would still manage to get the thing simplified to the point that even your grand-ma can understand that "autopilot" mode doesn't mean "pilot-less" like some folk believe, but means exactly what it has always meant in naval and aeronautical context)
After a while the fad passes, several bankrupted competitor of Apple will get bought by Huawei and a few other asian companies, who will flood the market with cheap cars (running the free but not quite open system by google - that google gives away to constructor as long as they include the closed binary "google car services" that earn a shit ton of advertising money to Google : "Okay, Google Car ! Let's drive to the cineplex. - Okay, Jack, driving to the cineplex. Do you know that the pizza restaurant there is having a rebate ?")
Apple will sue the now Samsung-owned VW over "curves on automobile" pretending that they own an universal design patent due to their aluminium+gorilla glass bubble car.
Then a few years later, they'll release the revolutionnary Apple iCar X which will look like the sedans that every single other company has been producing.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The godking of 3D would solve this in 3 months. I'd feel a lot better if thr creator of quake did the autonomous driving.
Yeah, and the bunnyhopping cars would get rid of all traffic jams.