Apple’s Self-Driving Car Caught on Video

Apple’s Project Titan may have hit a few rough patches over the years, but the tech giant isn’t giving up on automated transportation. In a video posted to Twitter this week, Apple was caught testing an autonomous car on public roads.

Before you get too excited, it’s actually a Lexus RX equipped with third-party sensors and hardware. According to The Verge, the vehicle features six LIDAR sensors as well as a host of cameras and radar units. The equipment that sits atop Apple’s SUV appears quite a bit bulkier than what you’ll find on autonomous cars from Ford or Waymo, for example.

Going to need more than 140 characters to go over ????'s Project Titan. I call it "The Thing" http://pic.twitter.com/sLDJd7iYSa

— MacCallister Higgins (@macjshiggins) October 17, 2017

The video was posted by MacCallister Higgins, who happens to be the co-founder of a self-driving startup named Voyage. Higgins said it’s likely the SUV’s compute stack was on top of the roof with the sensors, unlike other autonomous cars that store it all in the trunk.

Speculation has long surrounded Apple’s autonomous car efforts, and it was just a few months ago that the company came clean about its intentions. In an interview with Bloomberg published in June, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company is working on autonomous systems as a “core technology.” However, it hadn’t committed to manufacturing its own self-driving car.

Apple was issued a permit to test autonomous vehicles in California in April. Documents of Apple’s self-driving technology have also leaked showing Apple’s autonomous system that includes a steering wheel and pedals.

I saw one of these a few weeks ago pull up to an Apple shuttle stop-sit there for a few then drove off. http://pic.twitter.com/gUudZY1TIA

— idiggapple (@idiggapple) October 18, 2017

Source: The Verge, Fortune, MacCallister Higgins via Twitter

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