Apple transfers leadership of autonomous car unit to AI chief

Apple Inc. has moved its self-driving car unit under the leadership of senior artificial intelligence executive John Giannandrea, who will oversee the company’s continued work on an autonomous system that could eventually be used in his own car.

The project, known as Titan, is managed on a day-to-day basis by Doug Field. His team of hundreds of engineers have joined Giannandrea’s artificial intelligence and machine learning group, according to people familiar with the change. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

Previously, Field reported to Bob Mansfield, Apple’s former senior vice president of hardware engineering. Mansfield has now fully retired from Apple, which has led Giannandrea to take over.

Giannandrea joined Apple in 2018 as vice president of AI strategy and machine learning before being promoted to Apple’s leadership team as senior vice president later this year. Prior to that, he led Google’s machine learning and research teams. At Apple, in addition to the automotive project, he is in charge of Siri and machine learning technologies on Apple products.

Mansfield initially retired from Apple in 2012, only to return less than a year as senior vice president in charge of chip technology. Mansfield resigned from this post in 2013, then remained a part-time consultant.

In 2014, Apple decided to build an autonomous electric car to take on Tesla and other manufacturers, to reduce its ambitions towards 2016. The project was grappling with managerial, leadership and technical challenges, Bloomberg reported to the era, and Apple brought Mansfield back to lead the effort. Mansfield oversaw the shift from car development to the underlying autonomous system.

In 2017, Apple CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg that the Autonomous Systems effort was “the mother of all AI projects” and “a core technology that we consider very important.” He also described it as “probably one of the most difficult AI projects to work on.”

Apple has since removed some workers from the project, but continues to develop. In the past, the company has considered launching its own car, building the autonomous driving system for an auto manufacturing partner, or designing an aftermarket kit that works with several different cars, people said.

Apple has tested the technology on public roads in the San Francisco Bay Area since 2017. Last year, the company’s vehicles averaged about 118 miles before a human safety driver had to take the driver’s seat. control. That represented a one-mile increase per disengagement in 2018, according to data from the California Department of Motor Vehicles.

However, Apple also reduced the number of autonomous test kilometers driven in 2019 compared to the previous year, according to the data. The company has 66 cars in its fleet, according to the California DMV. That’s an increase from the 55 cars allowed in mid-2018.