Apple wins 54 patents covering self-driving car navigation systems

According to foreign media reports, the US Patent and Trademark Office recently granted Apple 54 new patents, two of which are related to autonomous vehicle navigation and belong to Project Titan.

Project Titan concept art. Image source: patentlyapple.com

Autonomous driving navigation system

The first of these is titled "Automated Driving Navigation System." Apple's invention covers a vehicle equipped with an automatically navigated driving route, and the vehicle is equipped with a sensor device, namely, a monitoring feature of the vehicle's driving route based on navigation along the driving route, and an automated driving navigation system in conjunction with the sensor, so as to perform a series of updates to virtual features of the driving route based on monitoring continuous manual navigation of the vehicle along the driving route; associate a confidence indicator with the virtual representation based on monitoring continuous updates to the virtual representation; and enable automated driving navigation of the vehicle along the driving route based in part on determining that the confidence indicator meets a threshold confidence indication minimum standard, so that the autonomous navigation system autonomously navigates the vehicle partially along the driving route based on one or more control elements controlling the vehicle and user-initiated commands, wherein the user-initiated commands are received by the vehicle's user interface at the automated driving navigation system to participate in automated driving navigation of the portion of the driving route.

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic block diagram of a vehicle #100 including an automated navigation system (ANS); FIG. 2 is an illustration of a vehicle including the ANS and a set of sensor devices navigating through an area including multiple road portions of multiple roads.

Image source: patentlyapple.com

Decision-making for motion control of autonomous vehicles

The second Titan project covers systems and algorithms for planning and controlling the motion of autonomous or partially autonomous vehicles. This new system focuses on two key systems using the "Behavior Planner" and the "Motion Selector."

Apple's patent FIG. 3 below outlines a hybrid approach to self-driving car decision making involving a combination of stochastic, deterministic, and learning-based techniques.

Image source: patentlyapple.com

Apple's patent FIG. 7 below illustrates a neural network model that can be used to optimize a tree search operation for motion control of an autonomous vehicle.

The new patent covers "one or more motion control subsystems including: (a) a braking system, (b) an acceleration system, or (c) a steering controller."

The new patent also includes, "In some instances, the behavior planner can be configured to generate policies using decision tree-based techniques, such as other versions of the Monte Carlo tree search algorithm," etc.