Apple's self-driving cars meets its first ever accident

Apple self-driving car program seems to be catching up. And inevitably, a there could few technical issues that can cause the cars to collide. According to a California DMV report, Apple's autonomous car, in this case a Lexus RX 450h, met an accident last week. It's Apple's very first reported autonomous collision on California roads, a DMV spokesperson told CNET.

The report appears to have been filed by Apple, not the police. It suggests that it wasn't Apple's fault. The car wasn't moving when it got rammed by another vehicle from behind, according to Apple's description:

On August 24th at 2:58 PM, an Apple test vehicle in autonomous mode was rear-ended while preparing to merge onto Lawrence Expressway South from Kifer Road. The Apple test vehicle was traveling less than 1 mph waiting for a safe gap to complete the merge when a 2016 Nissan Leaf contacted the Apple test vehicle at approximately 15 mph. Both vehicles sustained damage and no injuries were reported by either party.

Apple has a fleet of 66 autonomous cars in California as of July, up from 27 in January. The report was first reported by Bloomberg.

It has been quite some time since Apple filed for the autonomous car patent. The company keeps filing patents for several technologies. Previously, it filed patents that will upgrade the Pencil, but now few fresh patents have surfaced that gives us a peek into what Apple is working on. The patents show flexible batteries and creating 3D effects on 2D display, reports DigitalTrends.

The first patent shows a concept of a flexible battery that can extend the battery life of the iPhones. It has been shaped better to cram into the device and will move according to the movement of the components inside the handset. The patent suggests that the batteries are made of cells placed along a flexible substrate, enabling the battery to move accordingly.

Apple has been long rumored to be working on devices such as augmented reality headsets, but now it seems the company also wants to make 3D effects more engaging for people with iPhones. The patent suggests, in order to create a 3D effect on the screen, the device will track user's head - which might be done using the FaceID tech already seen on the iPhone X.

Using the positioning, the device can alter what the display is projecting to make an object appear 3D. This will also upgrade the ARKit for the developers to create new AR-based apps.