There appears to be five patents that currently protect Google's driverless car.
According to Steve van Dulken of BL Research Service, five patents have been filed and only one has been granted so far.
The only patent granted so far is entitled Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous mode, which we reported on shortly after it was published by the USPTO last December.
Four more patents are currently pending:
1. Traffic Signal Mapping and Detection
2. Zone Driving
3. Diagnosis and repair for autonomous vehicles
4. System and method for predicting behaviors of detected objects
What makes this set of patents especially interesting is their credited inventors. With the exception of patent number four (4), Christopher Urmson is part of the remaining four patents. In patent one (1), Urmson is credited together with Sebastian Thrun, vice president and fellow at Google, and possible Google's best known scientist at Google X and the public face of Google's driverless car system. Thrun headed Stanford University's self-driving car effort which won the DARPA Grand Challenge with the "Stanley" car in 2005 and placed second in 2007 with "Junior". Thrun was a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford between 2007 and 2011 and joined Google in April 2011 full time.
Urmson was also a major contender in the DARPA Grand Challenge and was the technology lead at Carnegie Mellon University's Tartan Racing team, which won the 2007 Grand Challenge and its $2 million prize. Their vehicle "Boss", a modified Chevrolet Tahoe SUV, covered a 60 mile road course in 4 hours and 10 minutes, ahead of Stanford's Junior, which arrived after 4 hours and 29 minutes. Only six teams finished the event. Virgina Tech was third, MIT fourth, a team consisting of University of Pennsylvania and Lehigh University fifth and Cornell University sixth.
With Urmson and Thrun, Google has the most experienced individuals on its staff to develop a self-driving car. Along with Urmson, Google appears to have hired the Who's Who of DARPA Grand Challenge contenders, including Nathaniel Fairfield, Philip Nemec, Michael Montemerlo, Dmitri Dolgov, and David Ferguson.
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Call me old school but these silly automatic-everything prius things will never be a part of your personality, they will never be cool and they will never be fun.
There just one small, insignificant, teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy difference... Google is actually inventing something TO patent.
Next up we should eliminate guns so people can't commit murders (Aurora), and spoons/forks so people can't die of heart disease. haha, just kidding. But the reducing traffic deaths is a good start at chipping away from the top 10 causes of death in the world.
Can't tell if serious or trolling.
You can argue easily that Apple's adaptations and inventions, whatever they may be, are also valid inventions. You can't simply dismiss Apple's track record as "invalid" simply because you may be a Google fan.
Example? Original iPod. It's just a combination of parts. But the form factor it made was brilliant for its time, and it stood the test of time until advent of iPod touch.
iPhone? Yeah, the first one seriously lacked any punch. Heck, EDGE antenna in 2007 was outdated. But it did something that no other company managed to pull off; eschew hardware buttons for a big, spacious (for 2007) screen controlled by finger, in a good-looking form factor. Their patent for that design stands because no one has done that before.
Basically, that's what it boils down to; whether you consider it to be actually useful or not, it doesn't matter. The inventor got there first, and if there was nothing like it before, they deserve the patent.
Everyone knows Apple invented the 4:3 screen ratio, flat displays, clear displays, rectangular displays, bezel less displays, speaker openings where the ear is supposed to go, thin cell phones and square icons or rectangular icons with rounded corners.
The only invention from Apple I have seen is how to make people feel good about spending $4000.00 on a cell phone + contract from AT&T.
Again, all you need to look at is this Tom's Guide news:
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Android-pre-iphone-early-build-google-sooner-G1,news-15105.html
Apple certainly didn't invent touchscreen, nor did they invent wireless technology. But heck, they put it together in a way that blew all the mobile phone players out of the water.
Un-fucking-believable.
Sebastian Thrun left Stanford because he is in debt to Stanford people with his involvment into Stanford student May Zhou's death, he is not innocent in an unsuccessful plotted murder on me either and I have been cursed by powers from Sebastian Thrun's side for many years. Sebastian Thrun dare not deny to the public his involvment into such fascism crimes till today and I am still waiting to see why he dare not
You're right, a CAR, or anything else I own will never be a part of my personality. If they were I'd be an Apple user.
cars stopped being cool the moment that they all started to look the same with a different name... you want a car to look intresting, well those are in the 50000$+ range
you want a car that you can afford off burgerking money, you will get a 1000$ piece of crap that is tons of work.
you know why most people have a car now? to go to work and come home, gas isnt cheap, and the only reason we drive is because of a point a to point b trip, we dont drive for the sake of driving anymore.
im 24, and thankfully with my living situation i don't require a car at all.
who wants to drive at all?
if you could give me a car, i could get in the back seat and sleep, or do ANYTHING but drive, i would take it in a heartbeat.
and where i live, i see enough drunk people, and old people who vear off into the oncoming lane that driving can scare the hell out of me, the sooner computers do it the better.
probably because they didnt patent moving hinges with walls on them, or patent a rounded pettle.
That's not a real web site.
The times they are a changing...
To say this technology won't be cool or have advantages... you're kidding right? I assume we should close the internet to keep libraries open as well?