Apple is planning to build a self-driving iCar which could make human drivers totally redundant. That's
the rumour circulating around the Apple watching community after the
tech giant hired a top artificial intelligence expert from NVIDIA. Although
Apple has not yet revealed its iCar plans, CEO Tim Cook recently
promised a "massive change" was coming to the world - a comment widely
interpreted as sketching a roadmap for his firm's motoring ambitions. Industry chatter suggests an Apple iCar could be on the road by 2019.
It welcomed Jonathan Cohen into a vague "software" job, Re/Code revealed.
He
headed up the "deep learning" wing of NVIDIA, which is famous for its
high performance graphics cards but also carries out research into
artificial intelligence.
“This is a big hire for Apple,” said Chris Nicholson, co-founder of the deep learning firm Skymind.io.
"Nvidia’s
GPUs [graphical processing units] are being used to power auto-pilot
systems in cars, so the implications are pretty clear.”
It
has reportedly been given permission to triple the size of its 600
person car team after meeting with officials in California.
This could mean an iCar will be publically available within four years, although it is unlikely to be fully driverless at first.
The scheme is called Project Titan and has already been revving up for more than a year, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Apple is understood to have been on a recruitment drive to help speed its car project along, hiring big hitters from automobile firms like Chrysler.
Apple has already built CarPlay, an in-car software platform that connects an iPhone to the car's entertainment and navigation system.
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