Posts Tagged: "autonomous vehicles"

When considering what makes an autonomous vehicle truly autonomous, it’s important to note that there are different shades of autonomy leading up to the fully self-driving car. One of the organizations which maintains a rubric helping to define autonomous vehicles is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which recognizes five different levels of autonomy for vehicles, starting with Level 0, the most basic tier in which the driver controls all operations, as is the case for conventional vehicles today. Level 1 function-specific automation is reached when a single control function is automated, such as when electronic stability control systems help drivers maintain vehicle control, without completely replacing the need for driver vigilance. Level 2 combined function automation occurs when two primary control functions are designed to work together to relieve a driver…

The recent Model 3 announcement by Tesla took the industry by storm and saw Tesla collecting a whopping $276 million in preorders in a matter of days. In focus in particular was the autopilot features on the new Tesla car – which meant that Autonomous Cars (a.k.a. driverless cars or self-driven cars) are finally breaching the line between concept and mainstream… Though efforts have escalated significantly in the last five years, autonomous cars are not a new concept. Initial research can be traced back all the way to the 1920s.

Thomson Reuters analysts put their research in high gear to quantify just who the major players in this space are with the “2016 State of Self-Driving Automotive Innovation.” Data was aggregated from the Derwent World Patents Index® collection to identify global patent activity and the total number of unique inventions issued in published patent applications and granted patents were analyzed from January 2010 through October 31, 2015. The findings detail a notable commitment from carmakers and tech companies to advance driverless technology, while uncovering the fact that established automakers are the most likely to have the biggest impact in the self-driving category in the near term.

In his final State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress, President Barack Obama remarked that he would make a push for action that would “put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system.” There were reports rumoring that Obama might make comments during his speech that were more pointed towards the development of autonomous vehicles. Although the President’s statements were couched in language relating more to alternative energy resources, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx followed up with an announcement at the recent North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) that the 2017 federal budget will include a nearly $4 billion proposal for investing into autonomous vehicle pilot projects over the next decade.

Innovation in the automotive sector was a huge story, both for the types of technologies being developed and the companies pursuing the R&D in that field. Drones and robotics also played a role in other top patent applications which we’re profiling today. Rounding out our list of top 2015 innovations includes an emotion analysis system for financial security, wireless charging schemes, low-power communications for wearable devices and a greenhouse window that can generate electricity while improving crop yield.

In many ways, 2015 has been the year of the automobile, especially in the tech world. Throughout the course of the year we’ve noted a great deal of business and technological developments that have been reshaping the entire vehicle manufacturing sector. Gone are the days that the market is completely dominated by names such as General Motors Company, Ford Motor Company or Toyota Motor Corp. As 2015 draws to a close, these traditional automaker behemoths are seeing encroachment on their position from some unusual names, especially those residing in Silicon Valley.

Yet another tech developer known for consumer electronics is getting into the autonomous vehicle market, a sign that we can continue to expect disruption for the conventional automaker model in that sector. A recent data breach settlement underscores the growing cybersecurity threat the world faces. The latest theory about alien life on other planets starts to fizzle and fade. Also, we hear some stories featuring notable names in the tech business world, including Michael Bloomberg and Elon Musk.

The research and development activities at Amazon have been strong in recent years and in 2014, the company placed 59th among all companies earning patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, receiving 741 in that year; this was nearly 40 percent greater than the number of U.S. patents earned by Amazon in the previous year. During the third quarter of 2015, Amazon earned 321 U.S. patents, a quarterly pace of innovation that would far outstrip its 2014 totals… Amazon has also jumped into the world of autonomous vehicle R&D with the filing of U.S. Patent Application No. 20150277440, entitled Sense and Avoid for Automated Mobile Vehicles. This system, which could be incorporated on air, water or ground-based vehicles, is meant to keep unmanned vehicles from colliding with each other, a technology which has been heavily sought by the drone community in response to concerns by federal regulators.

U.S. Patent No. 9180882, which is titled Avoiding Blind Spots of Other Vehicles, covers a method for maneuvering a vehicle protected here involves receiving sensor data collected along a roadway, detecting objects in the roadway from the data, identifying a set of objects relevant for blind spot detection, determining a blind spot area defining a lane space adjacent to a particular identified object and maneuvering a vehicle if it’s predicted that future locations of the vehicle would be within the determined blind spot area for any object. This technology is intended to both keep drivers safe on the road as well as improving the comfort of those drivers who might not want an autonomous or semi-autonomous car driving in their blind spot.

The Lockheed Martin Corporation does file quite a few of its technologies with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and last year earned 263 U.S. patents, tying it for 138th place with Bridgestone Corp. (TYO:5108) of Tokyo and United Microelectronics Corp. (NYSE:UMC) of Taiwan. In the third quarter, Lockheed earned 77 U.S. patents, according to data collected from Innography’s patent portfolio analysis tools. As the text cluster posted here will show readers, Lockheed’s recent research and development pursuits have focused pretty evenly on radio frequency signals, input signals, image data and electronic circuits.

At the end of October, the FTC again made a push on Capitol Hill for stronger data privacy standards, this time dealing specifically with the idea of connected cars. In prepared testimony for the hearing, entitled Examining Ways to Improve Vehicle and Roadway Safety, the commission brought up concerns it had with certain provisions of rules currently being drafted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which will require auto manufacturers to outfit their cars with vehicle-to-vehicle communications units in an effort to improve safety on America’s roads. The testimony was presented by Maneesha Mithal, an associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Protection, during an October 21st hearing of the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade.

We’ve been seeing a great influx of high tech companies entering the automotive industry this year, especially in the field of autonomous self-driving vehicles, so we’re not too surprised to see the issue of U.S. Patent No. 9134731, entitled Locality Adapted Computerized Assisted or Autonomous Driving of Vehicles. This Intel patent protects an apparatus for computerized assisted or autonomous driving of vehicles which has at least one processor, a policy generator operated by a processor to receive data associated with a plurality of vehicles within a locality and to generate locality specific policies for computerized assisted or autonomous driving of vehicles within the locality so that vehicles are driven in a manner that is adapted for the locality. This innovation is intended to improve the deployment of autonomous vehicles in developed economy markets, like America and Japan, where there are large populations of experienced drivers as well as strictly enforced codified traffic laws.

We identified a total of 54 patented autonomous vehicle technologies in the holdings of the Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE:TM), the largest foreign competitor among major auto manufacturers. These patents reflect practical systems helping autonomous vehicles identify roadway features. We also found 49 U.S. patents in the holdings of the Honda Motor Co. (NYSE:HMC) related to self-driving technologies, including the traffic safety systems and guidance.

The development of robust vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication systems are needed for the incorporation of self-driving cars on our roads and GM has been working on its own V2V systems. With 25 U.S. patents, Ford has a much smaller autonomous driving patent portfolio than GM but we managed to find some interesting technologies. Fiat Chrysler is an Italian-American company with London headquarters so it seems sort of suspect to continue considering them as part of the Big Three. In any event, the most recent patent we could find for an autonomous navigation technology was issued to FCA in 2007, showing us that there’s not much autonomous vehicle development going on at the company anyway. It is, however, interesting to note that the first-place overall in the autonomous driving R&D sector is California-based Google, which holds 145 U.S. patents in this field.

Google recently announced that it would be undergoing a major corporate restructuring, folding itself into a new corporation called Alphabet Inc. The move has been marketed as a means by which Google can remain more innovative insofar as it allows Larry Page and Sergey Brin to continue to make technological bets that have long odds while affecting search engine revenues less. Aside from the Internet division, there are as many as 80 other divisions where it is hoped that R&D development will continue while they grow into services with the billion+ level of users claimed by Google’s Internet services. This article takes a look at some of those divisions and how they stand to gain.