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 A LinkedIn profile for Jamie Carlson shows that he has left Tesla
and moved to Apple. At least six others with experience developing
self-driving technology and systems have joined Apple, according to
their LinkedIn profiles.
Attempts to reach all seven people were unsuccessful and Apple
declined to comment.
Sources have said that Apple is developing a car and studying
self-driving technology, but it is unclear if the iPhone maker is
designing a vehicle that could drive itself.
Since January, Apple has hired Megan McClain, a former Volkswagen AG
<VOWG_p.DE> engineer with expertise in automated driving, and Vinay
Palakkode, a graduate researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, a
hub of automated driving research.
In August, Apple hired Xianqiao Tong, an engineer who developed
computer vision software for driver assistance systems at microchip
maker Nvidia Corp <NVDA.O>.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Apple hired Paul Furgale,
former deputy director of the Autonomous Systems Lab at the Swiss
Federal Institute of Technology, earlier this year.
So-called advanced driver assistance systems, or ADAS, handle tasks
such as keeping a vehicle in a lane or driving by itself in
stop-and-go traffic, and they are considered the building blocks for
self-driving cars.
According to Carlson's LinkedIn profile, he joined Apple in August
in an unnamed position in a special projects group.
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Through July, Carlson was an engineer on Tesla's Autopilot
self-driving car program, and before that he worked on automotive
vision systems for Michigan-based supplier Gentex Corp.
Other Apple hires since September 2014 with similar experience have
worked at automakers BMW AG <BMWG.DE>, Volkswagen and Ford Motor Co
<F.N>, automotive suppliers Delphi Automotive <DLPH.N>, Robert Bosch
GmbH [ROBG.UL] and TRW, now a part of ZF Friedrichshafen AG
[ZFF.UL], according to their LinkedIn profiles.
Among those hired last fall were Sanjai Massey, an engineer with
experience in developing connected and automated vehicles at Ford
and several suppliers; Stefan Weber, a former Bosch engineer with
experience in video-based driver assistance systems, and Lech
Szumilas, a former Delphi research scientist with expertise in
computer vision and object detection.
(Editing by Peter Henderson and Matthew Lewis)
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