On Thursday the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that relates to Project Titan. Today highway drivers are familiar with using cruise control to keep a vehicle in-line with highway speed limits while providing a driver's foot a rest. In the future, cruise control will be advanced to 'autonomous control' wherein the driver will literally be able to hand over total or partial control of their vehicle to a very complex computer system.

In this particular patent, Apple's engineers focus on the camera and specialized camera systems like LIDAR to scan the road and the vehicle's total environment that will support full or partial autonomous driving.

Vehicle elements like tail lights were invented as elements to communicate with vehicles in the rear a driver's intent to stop and turn to avoid collisions. In Apple's Project Titan invention, both headlights and tail lights are to include added light beam elements designed to scan the vehicle's environment in realtime.

In brief, Apple's patent FIG. 1 below illustrates a vehicle which includes a vehicle navigation system communicatively coupled to multiple sensor devices and vehicle control elements; FIG. 2 illustrates a vehicle which includes a vehicle navigation system communicatively coupled to multiple element assemblies which each include one or more light emitter devices and one or more sensor devices.

More specifically, Apple's FIG. 1 is an overview of a hybrid vehicle navigation system. Meaning the system is designed to assist a driver operate their vehicle and operate in autonomous mode.

In autonomous navigation mode the vehicle includes a Vehicle Navigation System (or VNS) #110 executing active control of driving control elements #120 while enabling manual override of control of the elements via manual input from a user via user interaction with one or more user interfaces (#130) included in the vehicle.

The VNS can autonomously navigate the vehicle in the absence of input commands from a vehicle user via one or more user interfaces of the vehicle.

The vehicle includes a set of one or more external sensor devices (#116), also referred to as external sensors which can monitor one or more aspects of an external environment relative to the vehicle. Such sensor devices can include one or more camera devices, video recording devices, infrared sensor devices, radar devices, ultrasonic sensor devices, stereo sensor devices, light-scanning devices including LIDAR devices, precipitation sensor devices, ambient wind sensor devices, ambient temperature sensor devices, position-monitoring devices which can include one or more global navigation satellite system devices (e.g., GPS, BeiDou, DORIS, Galileo, GLONASS, etc.), some combination thereof, or the like.

Camera devices can include camera devices configured to capture images of an environment within one or more various sets of light wavelengths. For example, some camera devices are configured to capture images of an environment within a range of wavelengths which correspond to the wavelengths which can be visually observed by humans; such camera devices can include visible light cameras. In another example, some camera devices are configured to capture images of an environment within a range of wavelengths which are longer than wavelengths which correspond to the wavelengths which can be visually observed by humans; such camera devices can include infrared light cameras, IR cameras, near-IR cameras, etc.

Today's drivers have gotten used to "cruise control" that sets a specific speed to ensure that their vehicle doesn't go over the speed limit. The second benefit is to give the driver's foot a rest from being locked into in an unnatural position over a long period of time. The next generation of drivers will be taught how to take advantage of autonomous vehicle features and be trained in driving schools how to feel comfortable trusting the vehicle being put into semi or total "Autonomous Mode" wherein the vehicle takes control over driving while the driver is freed to read, use their iDevices, play a game, watch 5G TV and so forth. 5G is being touted as the needed step to make autonomous vehicles safer by being able to make decisions quicker.

Advanced navigation systems like the one Apple is describing will use advanced cameras and lights to scan the road and environment ahead of the vehicle and direct it safely to a destination by setting a city and/or address into its database just like you do today when using turn-by-turn in-car systems like CarPlay or Google Maps on your iPhone.

Apple's patent application that was published on Thursday by the U.S. Patent Office was originally filed back in Q1 2018. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

The Inventors

Ahmad Al-Dahle: a 14 year Apple veteran working on the Special Projects team. He studied to be an computer engineer at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Jean-Marie Bussat: Touch Module Architect with Apple until June 2018. He now works at Google as the Tech Lead Manager for Human-Machine Interface (HMI)

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