The Apple Car is undoubtedly one of the most interesting projects that the company has right now. Submerged in a sea of uncertainty, one does not really know its progress or its status. What if known are the patents that are being registered on the possible technologies that it would include, indicating that the Titan Project is still alive. In this article we tell you the latest patent registered in this regard.
The Apple Car would detect the breakage of glass
One of the great fears that drivers have when we are driving the car is that the front window or one of the windows will break. Unfortunately on the roads we can find different residues such as stones that can collide with the glass causing different cracks that the naked eye may not be seen. As we say, the stones that collide with the glass can cause very small cracks or something much more serious. It all depends on the size of the particular object and how fast it is being carried.
These cracks that appear in the glass can go unnoticed but the problem comes when there is another collision and this crack becomes more. That is why in a patent that has been granted to Apple, a system is presented that detects the glass breakage of a vehicle. The patent entitled ‘Systems to detect cracks in windows’ is applied initially to cars. But it could also be extrapolated to other situations such as the domestic sphere.
In the patent it is proposed that the window has an infrared light blocking layer attached to a conductive layer on top along with a control circuit. This circuit could apply different electrical currents that would have two functions: to heat the crystals (ideal for when they fog up) and to perform resistance measurements . When there is a break in the glass, a gap is also created in this layer that is attached to the glass. The control system will be able to detect that there is something that is not working quite well since it will not be able to transmit energy in a linear way. Thanks to the presence of multiple strips, a resistance map is created on the glass surface to determine both the position of the break and its severity.
In this way, the driver will be able to know at all times if the window of his vehicle has any cracks and exactly the position of the same. In this way, it will be possible to travel to a workshop to be able to repair it as soon as possible in order to prevent the crack from spreading and the repair being more expensive or even breaking, causing disastrous damage.
Status of Project Titan
As we discussed at the beginning, there is quite a bit of uncertainty regarding Project Titan. Some reports showed clear data that Apple had decided to cancel its own autonomous car and continue developing the software for other brands. At the moment what we have in different vehicles from other brands is CarPlay, but this cannot be compared with a software that converts a vehicle with the necessary sensors into fully autonomous.
But other data points to something totally opposite. What is clear is that they are working intensively to develop new technologies such as this for break detection. It can certainly be extrapolated to the idea that they are creating their own software to sell to the highest bidder and create smarter, autonomous cars. But as always happens with patents