Virtual reality is being used to test Apple’s self-driving vehicle.
According to a Bloomberg report on Tuesday, Apple will be able to continue to keeping their secretive plans to develop self-driving software behind closed doors thanks to virtual reality.
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman and Gerrit De Vynck reported that VR simulators will allow the Apple team to test their self-driving software without taking the system on public roads. The car operating system would be built at least partially in Canada, Bloomberg reported.
Since Apple has yet to publicly share their plans for either VR or a car, the latest report brings together both rumors, giving us a glimpse on Apple’s future plans for both technologies.
The self-driving platform simulation group now includes VR expert Doug Bowman who joined Apple in January. The computer tech professor from Virginia Tech literally wrote the book on 3D interfaces. Interestingly enough, Bowman was the recipient for one of the first $100,000 HoloLens research grants from Microsoft for a study on “collaborative analysis of large-scale mixed reality data.” For a full list of Apple’s VR plans, we listed out 10 of them back in February.
Bloomberg had previously reported that Apple was scaling back its plans to build a car, focusing instead on software for self-driving vehicle. The new report states that Apple has “dozens of software engineers in Canada building a car operating system.” Many of the engineers working Canada were hired over the past year, with dozens coming from Blackberry’s QNX, a leading automotive software provider.
