Apple appears to be testing a pool of cars near San Francisco that are equipped with powerful camera rigs. A Claycord blog has published photos of a car that CBS affiliate KPIX 5 has confirmed is leased to Apple. The mysterious cars have been spotted a number of times over the past several months in and around San Francisco. A video, published on YouTube in September, also shows a complex camera rig mounted on the roof of a similar Dodge minivan in New York. Both of the cars near San Francisco and New York appear to be equipped with the same LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) camera system. 
 
 LIDAR has been used extensively by Google, Nokia, and others to map out imagery for Street View services. The technology is also used in some adaptive cruise control implementations to monitor distances between vehicles and automatically apply the brakes on a car. It’s possible that Apple is using LIDAR to create its own Street View rival, or at least testing that scenario. Apple’s car also includes the same wheel sensor that Navteq used on its Bing cars previously to create street imagery for Microsoft’s mapping service. 
 
 Could Apple be creating a Google Street View rival? 
 
 Apple has been gradually improving its mapping service since it controversially dropped Google Maps as the default maps app for iOS more than two years ago. Inaccurate listings, poor 3D imagery, and bad driving directions plagued the service initially, but things have improved. Apple Maps still lacks a rival to Google’s Street View, but if Apple is planning its own then it faces a daunting task to match Google’s comprehensive coverage. A test in New York and San Francisco isn't enough to map all of the world’s streets. 
 
 Google also uses LIDAR cameras to help power its self-driving cars. Google’s system is mounted on top of its fleet of cars, and the camera spins constantly to evaluate its surroundings. In the video published on YouTube, you can see a spinning camera system at the rear of the vehicle. While it’s possible Apple may be testing its own self-driving car, the company doesn’t have a permit to test them yet. As KPIX 5 points out, that doesn’t mean Apple couldn’t partner with an authorized car company to test them initially. With Apple refusing to comment on the cars, it looks like these curious vehicles will remain a mystery for now. ||||| Apple Apple camera car on San Francisco streets leads to 'street view' speculation Apple vehicles covered in cameras show company could be working on a Google Street View competitor for Apple Maps A specially equipped van with scanning equipment registered to Apple was spotted on the streets of New York and San Francisco. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian 
 
 A car leased to Apple and covered in cameras and scanning equipment has been spotted driving around San Francisco. 
 
 The people carrier with system of 12 cameras and a lidar sensor, which scans the environment using a spinning laser, attached to its roof was spotted by a Bay Area local blog called Claycord news and talk. 
 
 The unmarked vehicle was confirmed as having been leased to Apple via its number plate, and it could indicate that the company is preparing a large update to its maps app for the iPhone and iPad, similar to the street-level photography within Google Maps. 
 
 Apple’s update to its operating system for the iPhone and iPad, iOS 9, is expected to debut in the summer and could introduce the new feature. That would require a significant investment from Apple and a fleet of cars to photograph and map roads. 
 
 A similar car to the one spotted in San Francisco was also captured on video in New York last year. 
 
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mapping car in New York. 
 
 Google’s Street View was introduced in 2006 across five major US cities before expanding to the rest of the UK and Europe in 2008. It marked the switch for Google from relying on other providers for maps to building its own. 
 
 Apple has invested heavily in its maps app and made it the default mapping application on the company’s smartphones and tablets. 
 
 Apple Maps was notoriously buggy with inaccurate data on its launch in 2012, prompting the chief executive Tim Cook to publicly apologise for user frustration stating that the company was “doing everything we can to make Maps better”. 
 
 Apple maps: how Google lost when everyone thought it had won Read more 
 
 Street View was a crucial step in improving the accuracy of Google Maps as part of the company’s “Ground Truth” project, adding context such as no access roads, traffic signs and the context not available from satellite or aerial photography. 
 
 Tracking the cars route with GPS and other sensors not associated with photography verified routes and brought local knowledge to the standard map. 
 
 A similar project from Apple could boost the accuracy of its map application and bring it up to par with competitors from Google and Nokia’s Here maps. ||||| LISTEN TO ARTICLE 4:21 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Share Tweet Post Email 
 
 A former Apple Inc. engineer was arrested on charges of stealing driverless car secrets for a Chinese startup after he passed through the security checkpoint at San Jose International Airport to board a flight to China. 
 
 Zhang Xiaolang was accused by U.S. prosecutors of downloading files containing proprietary information as he prepared to leave the iPhone maker in April and start work for Guangzhou-based Xiaopeng Motors. according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in federal court in San Jose, California. 
 
 A hardware engineer for Apple’s autonomous vehicle development team, Zhang was granted access to confidential company databases, according to the complaint. After he took paternity leave he told Apple in April he was moving back to China to work at Xmotors. Apple grew more suspicious after seeing his increased network activity and visits to the office before he resigned, according to the complaint. 
 
 Zhang admitted to the Federal Bureau of Investigation that he downloaded Apple driverless technology files to his wife’s laptop to have continued access to them, according to the complaint. He was arrested July 7. 
 
 XMotors has always strictly abided by the laws of China and the U.S. and takes protection of intellectual property rights seriously, Isabel Jiang, an XMotors spokeswoman, said in a statement. 
 
 “There is no indication that he has ever communicated any sensitive information from Apple to XMotors,” Jiang said of Zhang. When notified in late June that U.S. authorities were investigating Zhang, his computer and office equipment was secured and he was denied access to his work, she said. He was subsequently fired, she said. 
 
 The charges against Zhang echo civil claims that Waymo, Alphabet Inc.’s driverless unit, leveled against Uber Technologies Inc. and engineer Anthony Levandowski. While the lawsuit settled, a criminal investigation of Levandowski’s alleged trade secret theft from Google remains unresolved. 
 
 Waymo-Uber Trial Puts Spotlight on Tech’s Age-Old Talent War 
 
 The U.S. Treasury Department plans to heighten scrutiny of Chinese investments in sensitive U.S. industries under an emergency law. The crackdown is aimed at China’s investment in new-energy vehicles, robotics and aerospace, interests the Trump administration has viewed as a threat to economic and national security, according to people familiar with the plans. 
 
 Apple’s self-driving car project is a rare initiative by the company that has played out in the public eye over the past few years. In 2015, Apple executives approved a plan to build a self-driving, electric vehicle to take on Tesla Inc. and the Detroit auto industry. Apple hired more than 1,000 engineers. 
 
 However, about two years ago, Apple scaled back its plans to build a physical vehicle and has since had a team working on the underlying self-driving software and sensor technology. The self-driving space is exceptionally competitive, with dozens of companies across the world trying to take the lead in the burgeoning field. 
 
 Apple has dozens of cars equipped with its software on the road today, but it’s still unclear how Apple’s reliability stacks up against other industry titans like Uber Technologies Inc. and Google’s Waymo division. Apple plans to use its robocar technology on special Volkswagen vans to transport employees between offices. Apple hasn’t said how or if it will eventually release its technology to consumers. 
 
 About 5,000 of Apple’s more than 135,000 full-time employees are disclosed on the car project. Out of those, roughly 2,700 workers have access to one or more Apple databases containing information about the project, according to the complaint. 
 
 The majority of Zhang’s network activity “consisted of both bulk searches and targeted downloading copious pages of information from the various confidential database applications,” according to the complaint. Prosecutors accuse him of downloading engineering schematics, and technical manuals and reports. 
 
 “Apple takes confidentiality and the protection of our intellectual property very seriously,” company spokesman Tom Neumayr said in an email. “We’re working with authorities on this matter and will do everything possible to make sure this individual and any other individuals involved are held accountable for their actions.” 
 
 Tamara Crepet, a federal public defender who is initially representing Zhang, didn’t immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment. 
 
 The case is U.S.A. v. Zhang, 18-cr-70919, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose). ||||| Google’s Maps team introduced three new technologies on Wednesday: a feature to save offline maps in the Android Maps app, advanced 3-D models of entire cities in Google Earth, and a new Android-controlled “Street View Trekker” backpack for capturing Street View images where bikes, cars and planes can’t go. 
 
 Let’s start with the backpack, the most provocative of the three technologies introduced. 
 
 Street View Trekker 
 
 The Trekker is essentially a miniaturized version of all the gear Google packs into its Street View cars and tricycles, including a 15-lens camera that can shoot 46MP images. The Trekker, however, is controlled by an Android smartphone plugged into the pack, which is surprisingly lightweight given its size. 
 
 I tried it on for myself, and was impressed by how easy it was to move around with the Trekker on. 
 
 Luc Vincent, a Street View engineering director, recently took a Trekker with him on a ski trip in Tahoe, collecting images that could be used for Street View shots of the slopes. Of wearing the backpack while skiing, Vincent said, “It’s really not so bad. You’ve got to be a bit careful obviously, but, hey, it works.” 
 
 Not everyone, however, gets the idea: “A kid came up to me and said, ‘Hey, why don’t you use a GoPro camera instead,” Vincent said. 
 
 
 
 Google says only a handful of the backpacks currently exist, and unlike the other products it demoed Wednesday, the Trekker isn’t a consumer technology that anyone can try out for him or herself. The company plans on using the Trekkers to map out castles, ruins, hiking trails, and the Grand Canyon — places where wheeled vehicles and planes can’t go. 
 
 Google Earth’s New 3-D Maps 
 
 Using an iPad, Peter Birch, a Google Earth product manager, demoed a coming Google Earth update that showed a 3-D model of San Francisco displaying every single building in the city, as well as plant life, statues and other landmarks, each with it own modeling. A view of AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, showed the ballpark and its stands, scoreboard and lighting system fully modeled. 
 
 Birch wouldn’t say exactly when the advanced 3-D modeling was coming, but said it was coming to iOS, Android and desktop versions of Google Earth soon, and that major metropolitan areas would be the first to get the 3-D treatment. 
 
 “The goal is to model the world in 3-D,” he said in the presentation. “What we’re doing is we’re using automated technology to extract 3-D from aerial images.” The aerial images are shot by a fleet of contracted planes equipped with custom, Google-designed camera systems that take 45-degree angle shots in each of the cardinal directions, as well as straight down. 
 
 An automated process called stereo photogrammetry uses algorithms to create 3-D models from the overhead photos. Those models are then overlaid with other images, colors and textures to give the models a photo-realistic look. 
 
 “Every single building here is modeled and that’s important because we’re trying to create magic here,” Birch said. “We’re trying to create that illusion that you’re flying over the city.” 
 
 Previously, a few landmark buildings were modeled in Google Earth, but those buildings were few and far between. Birch showed a view of San Francisco as it currently looks in the software, and only City Hall and the Transamerica tower had 3-D models, while all in between was flat. 
 
 Birch said that Google hasn’t yet decided which cities would get modeled first, but that the company hopes to have “communities of over 300 million people modeled by the end of the year.” 
 
 The advancement of Google Earth’s 3-D modeling capabilities will come to all Google Earth apps — desktop, Android and Apple iOS. Wednesday’s demo could rightly be construed as a move to show Apple what it will be missing out on — and what it will have to compete with — if indeed Apple ditches Google Maps in the next version of iOS, as is widely believed to happen as early as next week at Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference. 
 
 Offline Maps on Android 
 
 The ability to save maps for offline viewing might not be as exciting as 3-D models of entire cities, or the Trekker backpack, but this new Google Maps for Android feature might end up being the announced feature we all use the most. 
 
 The Google Maps app for Android, not iOS, will receive an update in the coming weeks that will allow it to save maps so they can be accessed by users when they’re unable to connect to the cloud. Anyone who has ever tried to use Google Maps without a Wi-Fi connection or wireless signal knows how fruitless it is to actually use the app. Of course, offline apps have to be saved ahead of time — so there will be some planning involved to make this useful. 
 
 Rita Chen, a Google Maps product manager, demoed the feature on a Motorola Android tablet, saving a map of London for offline use. It worked just as advertised. 
 
 Google said the feature isn’t yet coming to the Maps app in Apple’s iOS, which is currently powered by Google Maps. The question of Google and Apple’s mapping future, or lack thereof, hung over the event the entire time. When Google took questions from the press, many reporters tried to get Google to confirm or deny that Apple was striking out on a mapping effort of its own. 
 
 Brian McClendon, a vice president of engineering who leads the Google Maps and Earth team, wasn’t giving in to the pressure, however. 
 
 “I’m very proud of Google Maps services and they’re available on all devices today and we’ll continue to make them as widely available as possible,” McClendon said. “We would like to get all services on all platforms.”
– A minivan driving around San Francisco has fueled speculation that Apple may be creating its own "street view" for Apple Maps, the Guardian reports. Spotted by the Claycord News & Talk blog, the van had 12 cameras mounted along with a lidar sensor, which uses a spinning laser to survey the environment. "When asked about what they are doing, the person sitting in the vehicle would never give an answer," says the blog. What's more, CBS San Francisco reports that the vehicle is leased to Apple. Could they be mounting a rival to Google Maps' popular Street View? After all, Apple is planning to release iOS 9 for iPhones and iPads in the summer, and was rather embarrassed by Apple Maps' poor directions and subpar 3D imagery when it first came out. Yet Apple would need a fleet of vehicles to challenge Google's Street View, the Verge notes. Also, technology analyst Rob Enderle says the van has "too many cameras" for street-viewing and may in fact be a self-driving vehicle. The van also resembles one seen in a Brooklyn YouTube video that describes it as a "self-driving car." Apple isn't among companies with a permit to test self-driving cars, but the van may be used by an Apple partner who does: "You know, they have partnerships with a variety of the carmakers," says Enderle. "Just because they’re leasing the car doesn’t necessarily mean it’s their project." Apple has no comment on the high-tech van or vans—so "it looks like these curious vehicles will remain a mystery for now," says the Verge. (See why Uber may use "robo-cabs.")