Patently Apple:
The system relates to improving detectability of road signs and vehicles on the road in low visibility conditions like fog or snow with a plurality of retroreflectors. For instance, if traveling on the road in a snow storm and road signs are covered in snow, a retroreflector system, using radar, would be able to read the text under the snow and relate it to the driver on a CarPlay display and/or other device display.
This is an interesting invention, shows Apple is still going down the Project Titan road, has value for a human driver.
But, it seems to me, the future of road signs and low-visibility hazard warnings (a car stuck in the middle of the roadway in a snowstorm, for example), is digital, not analog. In addition to flashers and reflectors, which are great for humans, signs/on-board hazard signals designed for automated vehicles will be equipped with high speed communications targeted at all nearby traffic.
The rub here is that time in between, where both human and automated traffic share the road.
Excellent example of a technology that could actually be legitimately helpful, today, to human drivers. The driving equivalent of Apple’s AR>VR philosophy. Life saving potential.
Nice tech if you can get it. Good luck getting cash-poor states to fund such new infrastructure without federal help, when roads and bridges are already suffering from decades of budget cuts.
“But, it seems to me, the future of road signs and low-visibility hazard warnings (a car stuck in the middle of the roadway in a snowstorm, for example), is digital, not analog.” — Both will always need to be analog. Digital signage won’t be needed because data like that will be available from mapping, thanks in part to tech like this. Analog signs will act as backup in case of connection loss. As for obstacles, a disabled car with no power is an analog hazard.
“But, it seems to me, the future of road signs and low-visibility hazard warnings (a car stuck in the middle of the roadway in a snowstorm, for example), is digital, not analog.”
It is statements like this that would lead to us never getting this technology. By this way of thinking, you would have to wait until the entire infrastructure is updated before you could add an autonomous vehicle. At that rate, it would never arrive.