

Google was awarded US Patent 8,078,349 for driverless car - antichaos
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=8,078,349

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antichaos
US Patent 8,078,349

Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous mode

Abstract

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.

Inventors: Prada Gomez; Luis Ricardo (Hayward, CA), Fairfield; Nathaniel
(Mountain View, CA), Szybalski; Andy (San Francisco, CA), Nemec; Philip (San
Jose, CA), Urmson; Christopher (Mountain View, CA) Assignee: Google Inc.
(Mountain View, CA) Appl. No.: 13/105,101 Filed: May 11, 2011

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ryan_s
this sounds interesting: "In some embodiments, a URL stored as a QR Code may
enable the autonomous vehicle to download new instructions." I wonder how
that's going to work.

