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Google Awarded Driverless Vehicle Patent
theodp writes "On Tuesday, Google was awarded U.S. Patent No. 8,078,349 for methods and devices for Transitioning a Mixed-mode Autonomous Vehicle from a Human Driven Mode to an Autonomously Driven Mode. From the fast-tracked patent application, which was filed last May and kept under wraps at Google's request: 'The autonomous vehicle may be used as a virtual tour guide of Millennium Park in Chicago. 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.'"
Um, no.
I think you are confusing the example task described in TFS with "the patent". That task described in the patent as an example of a single instance of an "autonomous vehicle instruction", but what is patented isn't the ability to execute either that instruction or autonomous vehicle instructions in general, but instead a mechanism for transitioning between autonomous and manual operations, and the example autonomous vehicle instruction is simply an illustration what "autonomous operation" is in that context.
But the summary doesn't mention an implementation of a driverless car. What they mention is methods and devices for Transitioning a Mixed-mode Autonomous Vehicle from a Human Driven Mode to an Autonomously Driven Mode... in other words, Google has patented the switch.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
See this is why I hate software patents. It's not because they are software, but because I haven't seen a single software patent that comes close to alluding how to actually implement the invention in the patent. If you take a patent for a mechanical device, it's usually described in such a way (using diagrams and such) how one who is skilled in the field would actually construct the mechanical device. When it's a software patent, they don't give any source code, pseudo code, or even allude to how one would actually program such a thing. So, even when the patent does expire, anybody wanting to take advantage of the invention in the patent has to come up with their own implementation from scratch. Sure you know the end goal of the program, but if there are no instructions on which algorithms one would use to create a driverless car, then the patent is useless. So Google gets a monopoly on driverless cars for the next 17 years, And after that, we all get nothing because we have no more information on how to implement said driverless car, because all the source code is locked up in copyright and trade secrets.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
More likely to protect it from immediate attacks by product handling robot vehicles as used in many factories. Vehicles that move, wait, are loaded, unloaded, depending upon product to be loaded or unloaded and then move on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_guided_vehicle.
So google has been awarded a patent based upon substituting the word 'car' for vehicle and 'human' for product. Looks like the US should win the award for the most bullshit patents awarded.
So yeah it's already been done, all over the bloody place by whole lot's of companies. So did google actually invent anything new hardware or did they just use other people's hardware and tack on a bit of software, define a susbset of possible product to be moved and vehicle type to be used (talk about bloody obvious).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen