Apple's director of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Ruslan Salakhutdinov, recently gave a talk about the company's advancements in AI and machine-learning technology. One of the focal points for the application of such technology were autonomous cars — also known as self-driving cars.
The address was given in Long Beach, California, during the Neural Information Processing Systems Conference held last Dec. 8. In his talk, Salakhutdinov mentioned several technologies that could pave the way to the production of genuinely autonomous cars.
For instance, he talked about how a system can be taught to recognize pedestrians and vehicles on the highway using a three-dimensional-point cloud integration. In his presentation, Salakhutdinov also shared a series of images that demonstrate how 3D-point cloud integration can identify other objects on the road.
He also talked about object-tracking with the help of a camera mounted in front of a car. Apple dubbed this tech "simultaneous location and mapping," or SLAM. To put it plainly, the SLAM uses a method of footage tracking that enables the camera to calculate positions precisely.
While SLAM is definitely useful for self-driving cars, it can also be a valuable technology for applications using virtual and augmented reality.
These technologies further confirm that the company has a stake in autonomous systems. This was a vision established by Apple CEO Tim Cook himself, in an interview with Bloomberg last June.
Besides Salakhutdinov, another key person from Apple shared insights about the company's progress on machine learning. Carlos Guestrin, Apple's director of machine learning, talked about the company's efforts in improving the methods with which machines learn by themselves. One of the most significant projects of Guestrin's division is the Face ID technology now found in the iPhone X.
These two people hold prominent positions at Apple, but they are allowed to hold posts in prestigious universities, as well. Salakhutdinov maintains a professorship at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, Guestrin is also a professor at the University of Washington in Seattle.
