Apple Self-Driving Technology: 5 Facts You Need To Know

Apple has been interested in automotive technology for a long time — the company already has the CarPlay infotainment system. But now it is moving further into the automotive industry and is working on its own self-driving technology.

Read: Self-Driving Vehicles: Apple More Interested In Apps Than Cars

Apple was granted a permit to test its self-driving technology in California earlier this month. The state released 41 pages of application documents to Business Insider because of a request to access public records. While the company has not made a formal acknowledgement of the information mentioned in the documents, a lot of light has been shed on what the company plans to do in terms of its self-driving program. The permit covers three 2015 Lexus 450h hybrid SUVs and six drivers. Drivers named in the application are PhDs in machine learning with previous experience in Bosch and Tesla.

Here are five facts about Apple’s self-driving program, which the company calls the “Apple Automated System”.

Switching between manual and automatic control: Apple included a 10-page training plan as part of its application. According to the Business Insider report, the plan includes operators taking back the manual control of the car during automated driving exercises of its system, which it calls the development platform. This means that Apple is not going in for a fully autonomous driving system like Tesla, but instead one that supports human driving.

The training packet revealed that the company’s self-driving car will use a Logitech wheel and pedals to activate the ‘drive by wire’ self-driving mode. If the driver presses the brakes or grabs the steering wheel, the car will disengage from the self-driving, but if the driver wants to increase acceleration, he/she can do so even in the self-driving mode.

Video-game like interface and functioning: The platform will controlled via a joystick and safety drivers “must be ready to intervene and take control,” according to the documents.

Life-saving technology: Apple believes that the technology could be potentially life-saving since it believes that it would be much safer than a human driving, according to a letter issued by the company to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in December.

Read: Apple Self-Driving Car Program To Be Tested In California

Electronic command system: "The development platform is capable of sending electronic commands for steering, accelerating, and decelerating and may carry out portions of the dynamic driving task," an Apple employee told Mashable Friday. By dynamic driving, Apple means adapting to task of everyday driving such as taking sharp U-turns and avoiding potholes.

Object monitoring: According to the document, “The development platform uses hardware and software to monitor surrounding objects and events.” This means that Apple is working on an object detection system similar to other self-driving competitors such as Waymo and Tesla. The company will have to be really careful about this, especially after the recent crashed involving Waymo and Uber self-driving cars.