If this summer you are in Vizcaya and you see a van with cameras all over the roof and in a rear window you read "Apple Maps", smile at the camera because you will be in the photo. It is about the Apple cars that are responsible for collecting all the necessary information to improve the Maps application, and that they will be during the months of July and August touring that province.
What exactly are these cars collecting? For months they have been talking about an Apple Street View service, which would allow you to move through the streets in a similar way to what Google already offers. If we add to this the new option that Maps offers in iOS 11, it seems that we could be on the right track.
This new Virtual Reality option that seems to be incorporated into Maps with the launch of iOS 11 would require many details about the streets that must necessarily be collected "at the asphalt level", and these cars would be in charge of it. There is talk of a possible augmented reality function that would allow to see real images of the streets and superimposed instructions to get to your destination or possible points of interest in the area.
Apple's plans in Spain are limited to Vizcaya this summer, where as we can see in the company website they will pass from July 1 to August 15, touring different locations in the Basque province. England, France and Italy are other European countries to which Apple has also moved similar vehicles, and of course the United States where the list of locations is very long for this summer. Perhaps for the presentation of the iPhone 8 in September we could already see a preview of what Apple has prepared for its Maps application, which was released with iOS 6 and has since evolved for the better in a more than evident way