Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, July 24 (Xinhua) one of the challenges for self-driving cars is that it is difficult for other traffic participants to judge their intentions. Unlike human drivers, you cannot make eye contact or gesture with self-driving cars, such as waving pedestrians to cross the road or inviting another car to turn while you are waiting. Apple believes that one way to solve this problem is to install a display screen on the outside of the car, using words and symbols to express the intention and state of the car to the people around it.

Apple acquired Drive.ai, a startup specializing in self-driving technology, in 2019. Drive.ai began installing external displays on its test vehicles as early as 2016 and improved them in 2018. The external display screen used by Drive.ai can display messages such as "waiting for you to cross the road", "pull over" and "passengers get on and off".

However, the display works well in low light, but it is difficult to read in strong sunlight. This is the problem to be solved by a patent recently filed by Apple, which describes an external display screen that can be covered with a unidirectional filter consisting of a microlens array and a mask with multiple holes. The microlens array can focus the light from the display screen through the hole of the mask so that the light can be seen by the observer. At the same time, the mask blocks most of the sunlight and prevents reflection from affecting the contrast of the display screen.

Apple said that the mask material does not have to be black, as long as it can block, or even have a specular effect. "as an alternative, the mask layer can have high specular reflection," Apple said. Ambient sunlight is reflected to the ground (away from the observer), maintaining the contrast of the display, and the display has a mirror-like appearance when off. "

CTOnews.com needs to point out that Apple has applied for a lot of patents, but most of them have not really been put on the market. In addition, no one knows what Apple's ultimate plans for autopilot technology are, maybe even Apple itself. But one thing is certain: if Apple cars do have external displays, they will blend into the body and be more elegant than the one pictured above.

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