“Some new data-gathering vehicles are roaming the streets of San Francisco. They’re unmarked, but are suspected to be Apple’s,” Leander Kahney reports for Cult of Mac. “They are laden with sensors, but what kind of data are they gathering, and what for?”
“Experts contacted by Cult of Mac say the mystery vans are next-generation mapping vehicles capable of capturing VR-style, 360-degree street photos,” Kahney reports. “Plus, the vans use Lidar to create extraordinarily precise “point clouds,” a prerequisite for self-driving cars. Mesh those two databases together and you’ve laid the groundwork for an autonomous vehicle’s navigation system.”
“Ryan Eustice, associate professor at the University of Michigan’s Perceptual Robotics Lab, said the combination of sensors on the vans points to a mapping vehicle,” Kahney reports. “The vehicle’s cameras, Velodyne Lidar sensors, wheel encoder and GPS all point to mapping.”
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