Apple publishes disclosed research

Apple scientists have submitted online the company's first publicly disclosed paper on self-driving cars. The paper is significant as Apple keeps all of its findings on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning behind closed doors due to the company's famed secrecy around potential products.   For years, the AI research community has been critical of Apple's secretiveness. The move towards more openness with the community is important for Apple as the push for more advanced AI software spreads across the tech industry.  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 information on depth, their low resolution makes it hard to detect smaller objects that are far away.

But with new software, "VoxelNet" the 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.

The iPhone maker has been relatively silent on self-driving cars beyond a few vague comments from Chief Executive Tim Cook. In an earnings call in August, Cook said creating autonomous driving systems is the "mother of all AI projects."

In April Apple was granted a permit to allow it to test self-driving cars.