Apple is sending camera cars onto German roads again to improve its digital maps. The vehicles will be on the road from this Thursday until mid-August, as the iPhone company announced on its Maps website.

Apple uses the recordings to create, among other things, detailed maps with information about traffic routing and shops. The company also shows photos of streets in its map service in the “Look Around” function - similar to Google “Street View”. Apple's cars with cameras and laser radar sensors that can recognize shapes came to Germany for the first time in 2019.

As was the case almost three years ago, people with camera backpacks will once again be out and about where cars can't go. These recordings - for example in parks, pedestrian zones and train stations - are to be taken in stages in Munich, Berlin, Potsdam and Hamburg from May 23rd to July 31st. Apple emphasizes that, as before, faces and license plates will be obscured in the "Look Around" function before publication.