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Project Titan is such a funny thing. Back when Chauffeur, Google's self driving car project was the only game in town, automakers found it pretty easy to dismis
by Fricken 9y ago
Project Titan is such a funny thing. Back when Chauffeur, Google's self driving car project was the only game in town, automakers found it pretty easy to dismiss, but when rumours of an autonomous Apple car began to circulate, the tone amongst car people began to shift. It's what got the automakers thinking "Is this self driving car jazz for real? Omg it might be for real! The tech companies are going to eat our lunch".
It took the carmakers a while to figure out which way was up. The Germans spent $3 billion acquiring Here maps, which was a misfire. Tesla was quick to implement Mobileye's EyeQ3 chip and single camera system and then promptly burned their bridges with Mobileye by pushing the system's capabilities way beyond it's safe design constraints.
Ironically, Apple had succumb to irrational exuberance themselves in moving so aggressively on Titan. Analysts notes a $10 billion dollar bump in Apple's R&D budget during the 2 years when Titan was big. Supposedly the project was a clusterfuck. Steve Zadesky, who was put in charge wanted to make a fairly conventional car with autonomous features, but Jony I've and a group of engineers were adamant about developing a robotaxi, which offered the best opportunity to "reinvent the mobility experience". They couldn't come to terms and executive leadership of Titan was broken from the start.
So however much things were scaled back, the project definitely isn't dead. 27 test vehicles isn't small potatoes. Maybe Apple still intends to build their own vehicle, I guess we'll see.
- kaiby 9y agoThey could've done a lot more if they were more focused, but that's not really how Apple works. They don't really research based on current technology, they like to spend time & money what could be invented. They even investigated things like "spherical wheels" [1]: > Apple even looked into reinventing the wheel. A team within Titan investigated the possibility of using spherical wheels — round like a globe — instead of the traditional, round ones, because spherical wheels could allow the car better lateral movement. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/technology/apple-self-driving-car.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/22/technology/apple-self-dri...
- robotresearcher 9y agoIn case anyone is excited about spherical wheels, they have been looked at many times. They have the unappealing feature that the area of tread making contact with the road is minimized, giving bad grip and high pressure. They are used occasionally in robotics on very hard, smooth, dry surfaces.
- syntaxide 9y agoWouldn't this be fixed by adding more "tires" then?
- robotresearcher 9y agoIf adding expensive complex components is your thing, sure. The more popular option is to use regular wheels. Cars go forwards a lot and other directions very much less.
- hi-im-mi-ih 9y agoYou make some great points here. However, isn't 27 vehicles small potatoes? Tesla has almost 500,000 cars on the road and it also has 5 billion miles driven. That's a lot of training data. The approach to self-driving cars is largely training a model, so the data from 27 cars is actually extremely underwhelming.
- dmode 9y agoTesla doesn’t have 500K cars. I believe they have sold close to 150k cars till date. But your point remains valid. That is a lot of data compared to 27 cars
- portman 9y agoI had VIN #150,000 18 months ago, and they crossed 200,000 in May 2017 so it’s likely sitting at just shy of 300,000 right now. The 150k figure you are citing is US only (where there is a race to 200k when the federal credit expires).
- dmode 9y agoYou are correct. I was thinking US numbers due to the focus on Fed credit
- Fricken 9y ago27 cars is a start. In terms of fleet size, Waymo, Uber and Cruise each have about 200 test vehicles on the road, gathering in the ballpark of 4 terabytes of data per hour, and they currently have $150k or more of sensor+compute hardware on each vehicle, they use high definition 3D maps and are focused on validating their software to function safely within limited, geo-fenced areas; a realistic objective. If Tesla were serious about developing an autonomous OS they would need to take a similar approach, but since all they're trying to do is summon the demon they can get away with a pentagram, a 3 horned goat, a copy of the necrinomocon and some candles.
- stcredzero 9y ago
- gallerdude 9y agoMan, I find this inside baseball kind of stuff fascinating. Where do I sign an NDA to learn the secrets of the past 10 years of Apple?
- rockinghigh 9y agoCar makers had self-driving research labs long before Titan leaked out.