Yeah, it'd be nice if more people read patent claims before passing judgement.
I took the obvious practical implementation of this to be a method to guide autonomous vehicles into a parking lot/structure. The car rolls up to the landing strip, the driver gets out, the car switches to autonomous mode, gets the connection information to the parking management server, asks for and receives a spot assignment and instructions on getting there, etc.
GPS and map data are simply insufficient to handle autonomous parking. There are precious few universals in parking laws, customs, lot-flow, etc. And automatic parking is one of the unavoidable expectations of self-driving cars.
Symbols on the ground are infrastructure, you should not be able to patent a thing like that. Imagine every company that makes vehicles having to license someone else's tech in order to be able to use public roads, or a huge variety (one for every brand) of competing symbols polluting the roads.
Signs on roads == traffic signs, open formats and readable by everybody.
Stuff like this makes me twitch. Why are researchers so keen to have my car controlled by radio tags? The potential for abuse is seemingly never discussed because I feel that admitting it will kill this idea stone dead, as it should.
"Disclosed are methods and devices for transitioning a mixed-mode autonomous vehicle from a human driven mode to an autonomously driven mode. Transitioning may include stopping a vehicle on a predefined landing strip and detecting a reference indicator. Based on the reference indicator, the vehicle may be able to know its exact position. Additionally, the vehicle may use the reference indictor to obtain an autonomous vehicle instruction via a URL. After the vehicle knows its precise location and has an autonomous vehicle instruction, it can operate in autonomous mode."
So it does not patent "driverless vehicle", but a particular method of transition from mixed-mode to driverless mode.
"Driverless Vechicle" is a compound adjective modifying patent. It's not a patent for (all) driverless vechicles, it's a patent regarding driverless vehicles.
Car models aren't like software—people aren't constantly producing new, accidentally-infringing works. I'm pretty sure this is one of those patents that will get licensed by all the other big companies, rather than sued over.
If they don't patent it, somebody else would and would drag them to court. (gosh, I'm defending a multinational - I really hope they don't misbehave with this)
This may indicate the Google has found 100% autonomous operation is not practical yet and so they spent time working on how to easily transition in/out of that mode. I could see a situation where you have a toll-both type area before entering highways that would trigger your vehicle's autonomous mode and another one to switch back to manual as you exit.
Practical or not, I think the first jurisdictions to permit robot drivers will limit where they are permitted[1]. This would work well for that, though realistically, I think an online map of allowed regions and a GPS will be the real solution unless regular drivers want to be informed that others are robot driven, then it will be road side signs.
EOM
[1] I drove south through Nevada at 70+mph on a ruler straight road for 90 minutes without encountering another vehicle, human, or cow. Start there, expand as experience with the systems is gained.
While I am super excited for the future of auto-driving auto-motives, does this patent really prove anything novel and non obvious? QR codes are already used for orientation by many systems, and it seems quite obvious that an autonomous car would need orientation sensors and a computer with at least one line of code relating the operation of an autonomous vehicle. I think google has made some real patent-worthy innovations with their driver-less vehicles but this seems to be of the overly broad progress stifling type of patent.
When those cars make into our roads, I expect them to have way less accidents than us, humans. Therefore, more and more the human driving insurance will start to spike to levels that make it not cheap to drive your own car.
When the issue is music or software people pirate, patents are scorned and declared the enemy of progress. When the issue is driverless cars, the attitudes seem much more relaxed.
Seriously, though, this is a complete waste of time. Mass transit has been solving the problem of getting people from point A to point B without them having to do the piloting for a hundred years. What we really need to be spending our money on is rebuilding the streetcar and intercity rail systems that used to connect nearly every town in the country and electrifying them. This will drastically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels (because oil is the only portable energy source cheap and powerful enough for automobiles) and reducing greenhouse gasses. Instead, we're talking about an overly complex solution involving creation of an automated driving system on all our highways and compelling thousands of users to upgrade to driverless cars, which may or may not be electric.
In other words, Google's driverless car is to transportation as Dart is to DOM scripting.
So, I've been a life-long rider of mass-transit in Toronto, and Southern Ontario. I think I was 30 before I actually had to drive to a job.
You know what -- I hate transit during rush hour. It's uncomfortable, you don't get a seat. Ugh. During the off-times, it's great.
Traffic sucks, but at least you've got a little bubble of space over which you have control. This is psychologically significant.
Think of the difference between having a desk whose layout (or lack thereof) you control, versus working elbow-to-elbow at a long table with other people's jostling you and their crap falling in your space.
People need a certain amount of control over their space.
I get the impression you think that electricity is automatically clean energy. Have you ever thought about how that electricity is generated? Ever heard about coal or nuclear power plants etc.? Do you think they're are environmentally friendly?
[+] [-] Wilya|14 years ago|reply
Actually, the QR-code (or equivalent) is used to fetch "instructions for performing the autonomous vehicle instruction" (which could be anything).
And the QR-code can be replaced by a lot of things (radio signal, etc).
[+] [-] roc|14 years ago|reply
I took the obvious practical implementation of this to be a method to guide autonomous vehicles into a parking lot/structure. The car rolls up to the landing strip, the driver gets out, the car switches to autonomous mode, gets the connection information to the parking management server, asks for and receives a spot assignment and instructions on getting there, etc.
GPS and map data are simply insufficient to handle autonomous parking. There are precious few universals in parking laws, customs, lot-flow, etc. And automatic parking is one of the unavoidable expectations of self-driving cars.
[+] [-] thebigshane|14 years ago|reply
Suggestion: "Google awarded patent involved with driver-less vehicles"
[+] [-] stbullard|14 years ago|reply
Are any measures taken to prevent someone from spray-painting a rogue QR code on the ground to reroute traffic?
[+] [-] jacquesm|14 years ago|reply
Signs on roads == traffic signs, open formats and readable by everybody.
[+] [-] femngi|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peterknego|14 years ago|reply
"Disclosed are methods and devices for transitioning a mixed-mode autonomous vehicle from a human driven mode to an autonomously driven mode. Transitioning may include stopping a vehicle on a predefined landing strip and detecting a reference indicator. Based on the reference indicator, the vehicle may be able to know its exact position. Additionally, the vehicle may use the reference indictor to obtain an autonomous vehicle instruction via a URL. After the vehicle knows its precise location and has an autonomous vehicle instruction, it can operate in autonomous mode."
So it does not patent "driverless vehicle", but a particular method of transition from mixed-mode to driverless mode.
[+] [-] jessriedel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] reader5000|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hessenwolf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cq|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mmcconnell1618|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jws|14 years ago|reply
EOM
[1] I drove south through Nevada at 70+mph on a ruler straight road for 90 minutes without encountering another vehicle, human, or cow. Start there, expand as experience with the systems is gained.
[+] [-] gerggerg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|14 years ago|reply
Filed: May 11, 2011 Issued: December 13, 2011
[+] [-] geogra4|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nswanberg|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rafamvc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheFuture|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plaes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dreamdu5t|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] saraid216|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omouse|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbgty|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamjam|14 years ago|reply
(I didn't read the patent!)
[+] [-] dkastner|14 years ago|reply
Seriously, though, this is a complete waste of time. Mass transit has been solving the problem of getting people from point A to point B without them having to do the piloting for a hundred years. What we really need to be spending our money on is rebuilding the streetcar and intercity rail systems that used to connect nearly every town in the country and electrifying them. This will drastically reduce our reliance on fossil fuels (because oil is the only portable energy source cheap and powerful enough for automobiles) and reducing greenhouse gasses. Instead, we're talking about an overly complex solution involving creation of an automated driving system on all our highways and compelling thousands of users to upgrade to driverless cars, which may or may not be electric.
In other words, Google's driverless car is to transportation as Dart is to DOM scripting.
[+] [-] JabavuAdams|14 years ago|reply
You know what -- I hate transit during rush hour. It's uncomfortable, you don't get a seat. Ugh. During the off-times, it's great.
Traffic sucks, but at least you've got a little bubble of space over which you have control. This is psychologically significant.
Think of the difference between having a desk whose layout (or lack thereof) you control, versus working elbow-to-elbow at a long table with other people's jostling you and their crap falling in your space.
People need a certain amount of control over their space.
[+] [-] thebooktocome|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hkolek|14 years ago|reply