One thing which Google has over many other map players is having the data of places on maps which are of interests to people or mostly known as Point-of-Interests or POI. Thanks to their streetcars as well as humans carrying a large 360-degree camera walking around, other players are lacking in that sort of data. Apple hopes to be able to change that by using its self-driving cars to do that work for them.
In a patent application which Apple has filed, the patent talks about using sensors on the car to capture images of POI and this includes panoramic as well as 3D recreated scenes. The data can be stored locally in the car as well as on the cloud which can be accessed by other cars or devices. This hints at, of course, Apple devices, whether it may be mobile devices or Macbooks.
Hopefully, with this, better data can be generated automatically but with the current speeds at which Apple is moving with their self-driving car efforts, it will be sometime before any of those types of technologies reach here in Malaysia.
