Apple Admits Working on Autonomous Driving Cars

BBC: A company spokesman for Apple said that a letter to US transport regulators, to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) was prompted by its "heavy investment in machine learning and autonomous systems" and that it wanted to help define best practices in the industry. The company has already registered several car-related internet domains, including apple.car and apple.auto.

Quotes from the letter:

"Apple uses machine learning to make its products and services smarter, more intuitive, and more personal. The company is investing heavily in the study of machine learning and automation, and is excited about the potential of automated systems in many areas, including transportation.

Apple affirms that, in order to best protect the traveling public and keep up with the pace of innovation, NHTSA should expedite requests for exemption and interpretation and petitions for rulemaking.

Apple agrees that companies should share de-identified scenario and dynamics data from crashes and near-misses. By sharing data, the industry will build a more comprehensive dataset than any one company could create alone.
This will allow everyone in the industry to design systems to better detect and respond to the broadest set of nominal and edge-case scenarios. Apple looks forward to collaborating with other stakeholders to define the specific data that should be shared."

Thanks to ND for the link!