The United States Patent and trademark Office has granted internet company Google a Patent for a driverless car. The Patent itself actually describes “landing strip” technology which can control a car, rather than for a new design of a car itself.
The United States Patent and trademark Office has granted internet company Google a Patent for a driverless car.
The Patent itself actually describes “landing strip” technology which can control a car, rather than for a new design of a car itself.
The landing strip appears to be little more than an embedded sensor in the ground, whether it is a radio, QR code, or some other means of transferring information to the car. When the driver takes the car to a piece of road with the landing strip, the car would then transition to autonomous mode and drive itself.
Google unveiled plans for a self driving car back in 2010 in a corporate blog post. Google said that it had hired some of the best autonomous-vehicle engineers but wasn’t specific about how this advances its business. However, one of its software engineers, Sebastian Thrun, said that Google’s goal was to “help prevent traffic accidents, free up people’s time and reduce carbon emissions by fundamentally changing car use”.
According to the Patent, the landing strips would send data to the cars GPS instructing it where to go.
“For example, the autonomous vehicle may be used as a virtual tour guide of Millennium Park in Chicago,” the Patent states. “In the example embodiment, the vehicle may have an instruction to drive to the Cloud Gate (Silver Bean) sculpture at Millennium Park. When the vehicle arrives, the autonomous instruction may tell it to wait in the location for a predetermined amount of time, for example 5 minutes. The instruction may then direct the vehicle to drive to the Crown Fountain at Millennium Park and again wait for 5 minutes. Next, the instruction may tell the vehicle to drive to the Ice Rink at Millennium Park and wait for another predetermined amount of time. Finally, the vehicle instruction may tell the vehicle to return to its starting position.”
“In some embodiments, the vehicle instruction may be a fixed instruction telling the vehicle a single route and timing for the route,” Google’s Patent added. “In another embodiment, the autonomous instruction may be a list of possible instructions presented to a human in the vehicle. The human may be able to select a point of interest and the vehicle will responsively execute the associated autonomous instruction. In a further embodiment, the vehicle instruction is a single command telling the vehicle to drive itself to one specific location.”
Google has already successfully lobbied the state of Nevada to pass a law requiring its Department of Transportation to create rules and regulations for autonomous vehicles on its highways.