A Patent Perspective on Autonomous Vehicles
| Author | Bruce Rubinger - Benedikt Biechele |
| Position | Bruce Rubinger, PhD, is the founder and managing director of the firm Global Prior Art in Boston,Massachusetts. His team specializes in the invalidity defense, IP due diligence, opportunity analysis, IP strategy,and smart product innovation that captures key patent assets. Over the last 35 years, his efforts have focusedon the semiconductor,... |
| Pages | 28-66 |
26 ©2019. Published in Landslide®, Vol. 11, No. 5, May/June 2019, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or
disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.
A Patent
Perspective
on
Autonomous
Vehicles
By Bruce Rubinger
and Benedikt Biechele
Volvo’s 360c autonomous concept car
27
©2019. Published in Landslide®, Vol. 11, No. 5, May/June 2019, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or
disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.
Bruce Rubinger, PhD, is the founder and managing director of the rm Global Prior Art in Boston,
Massachusetts. His team specializes in the invalidity defense, IP due diligence, opportunity analysis, IP strategy,
and smart product innovation that captures key patent assets. Over the last 35 years, his efforts have focused
on the semiconductor, electronics, software, defense, and autonomous vehicles elds. He can be reached at
rubinger@globalpriorart.com. Benedikt Biechele, Dipl.-Ing., is a leading member of the Semiconductors &
Electronics Group at Global Prior Art, which supports high-stakes litigation and licensing matters. His areas
of expertise include optical engineering, semiconductor fabrication and packaging, and sensing technology for
autonomous vehicles. He can be reached at bbiechele@globalpriorart.com.
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are a part of a revolution-
ary technology that will have a huge impact on many
industries, enhance passenger safety, and greatly impact
lifestyles. This discussion is limited to the patent landscape
for self-driving cars or AVs, such as driverless cars, SUVs,
and trucks, and does not address boats, drones, and other
applications. The coming commercialization of AVs will be
enabled by many new technologies and create tremendous opportunities.
Urban environments will likely see the fastest and biggest impact of this technology.
Today, 82 percent of the North American population live in urban areas, and a recent United
Nations report1 estimates that 68 percent of the world population will urbanize by 2050.
This predicted transformation of urban mobility powered by AVs will further change the
concept of traditional vehicle ownership that has already been altered by the ride-hailing
services of this decade. The sectors of personal and public transportation, commercial deliv-
ery, and trucking will all experience minor to major disruptions. And the disruptions have
already begun, as more and more AVs make their way onto public roads today.2
Despite the expected impact of AVs, there is limited literature describing the AV eco-
system and key innovations that reects insights gleaned from individual cutting-edge
patents. In contrast, the literature tends to focus on AV safety, or provide a high-level
overview of which rms have the largest AV portfolios without analyzing the patents
or positing a looming patent war between Silicon Valley and Detroit.3 But looking at
individual patents does provide a detailed window into the innovative strategies of key
players and the likely evolution of AV technology.
The recently granted patents and pending applications that we highlight fall into two cat-
egories: (1) strategic technologies associated with implementing AV technology, and (2)
opportunities empowered by this transformative concept (e.g., transportation as a service (TaaS),
the evolution of vehicular interiors, content delivery and consumption, and targeted ads).
TaaS—Your Personal Limousine Has Arrived
Starting in 2012, services like Uber and Lyft began disrupting the ride-hailing mar-
ket with their business models. Today they are so ubiquitous and successful that their
names have become verbs. Ride-hailing/sharing companies are at the forefront of using
AVs for “transportation as a service” in a market that is projected to grow at an annual
rate of over 20 percent to nearly $305 billion by 2025.4 From an economic perspective,
the introduction of AVs is very attractive for eet operators: the initial cost of self-driv-
ing vehicles is larger compared to conventional cars, but this premium will be amortized
by removing the drivers from the equation and thus signicantly lowering operating
expenses. In addition, the eet owner can optimize the dispatching, roaming, fueling,
and maintenance of AVs for additional savings.5
TaaS requires successfully addressing many critical technologies. These innovative
approaches are highlighted below through the patent art, which also identies key intel-
lectual property (IP) players.
Vehicle Customization
The patent lings of prominent players in the space reect the desire to customize and
automatize the user experience. For example, user-specic adjustments to the requested
cars’ interior based on customer proles or learned data will be completed by the time
the vehicle arrives at the pick-up location. U.S. Patent No. 9,989,645, assigned to Uber,
©2019. Published in Landslide®, Vol. 11, No. 5, May/June 2019, by the American Bar Association. Reproduced with permission. All rights reserved. This information or any portion thereof may not be copied or
disseminated in any form or by any means or stored in an electronic database or retrieval system without the express written consent of the American Bar Association or the copyright holder.
28
teaches studying the accelerometer data of a user’s phone to
derive the optimal settings for the seat, as well as storing past
preferred settings. By the time the car arrives, the user will be
able to enjoy a comfortable seat that does not need tweaking
and provides the precisely calculated and ample amount of
leg room. A pending patent application by Zoox (U.S. Patent
Application No. 2017/0126810) goes even further and allows
the vehicle to customize not only the interior ambient features
(i.e., lighting, sound, and temperature) for the user, but also
the driving behavior and road handling of the vehicle itself
through adjustments to the active suspension.
Vehicles in general are easily capable of maneuvers that
exceed the human level of comfort. Since future AVs are
likely going to be electried in some way (fully electric vehi-
cles or hybrid), this issue is going to be further amplied due
to their increased performance. The level of comfort, how-
ever, also varies among users: driving behavior that is quite
pleasing to one user can be perceived as dangerous or reck-
less to others. A patent assigned to Denso (U.S. Patent No.
10,139,831) shows how an AV could modify its driving
behavior by observing the reaction of the passenger to a lane
change maneuver and then altering its allowed acceleration,
yaw angle, and inter-vehicle distance using machine learning.
Your personal chauffeur has arrived.
Rider Security
A lot of thought has been given to the issue of conrming a
rider’s identity. How will a customer be veried by the AV as
the authorized user and allowed entry? There are several dif-
ferent approaches that range from biometric identication via
facial/voice recognition to authorization via the user’s per-
sonal device. Ford’s U.S. Patent No. 9,823,081 uses LiDAR
technology to scan a passenger’s physical features to conrm
the identity before allowing access to the AV. Waymo’s U.S.
Patent No. 9,194,168 automatically unlocks the AV with a
previously shared encryption key in combination with moni-
toring the distance to the user’s cell phone.
And safety and security concerns do not cease once
the passenger is in the vehicle. A pending patent applica-
tion by Bosch (U.S. Patent Application No. 2018/0231979)
addresses situations where underage passengers are trying
to travel to destinations that are deemed off-limits. Here, a
video camera inside the vehicle paired with demographic
information restricts the available routes or drop-off loca-
tions to those preapproved by a parent.
Vehicle Behavior—Sending Cars to Driver’s Ed
The near future of mobility in urban areas will likely be a
mixed environment, of human drivers and fully autonomous
vehicles. While it is projected that children born today will
no longer be able to drive a car,6 there will be a transition
period during which human-operated vehicles are phased
out and slowly replaced by AVs. Driving etiquette and
“expected behavior” of trafc participants, which are sec-
ond nature to humans, also need to be implemented in the
AV’s core. We broadly categorize this area into (1) vehicle
intent signaling and (2) vehicle awareness and response in a
mixed driving environment.
Vehicle Intent Signaling
Simple examples include notifying a pedestrian that it is safe
to cross the street or indicating a vehicle’s path of travel. The
patent lings here are plentiful and come from established
traditional car companies and startups alike. Examples are:
• Toyota’s pending U.S. Patent Application No.
2018/0276986 replicates the classic driver/pedestrian
interaction at an intersection: the AV displays a message
on its exterior to a pedestrian, checks whether the pedes-
trian acknowledged receipt of said message, and then
proceeds through the intersection or turn (see g. 1).
• Drive.ai’s pending U.S. Patent Application No.
2018/0173237 not only displays the vehicle’s inner state
(fully autonomous or manual mode) on its exterior to other
trafc participants to make it more predictable, but also can
give insight into the situation in front of the vehicle that
might help drivers understand its behavior (e.g., “vehicle is
stopped because pedestrian is crossing the street”).
Vehicle Awareness and Response in a Mixed Driving
Environment
Interesting lings have been emerging that focus on cars emu-
lating human driving behavior. Pulling over for an ambulance
or re truck is hopefully a reex for human drivers, but this
has to be taught to AVs. Waymo is the veteran in this space,
with granted patents dating back to 2012 (e.g., U.S. Patent No.
8,849,557) that teach identication of an emergency vehicle on
the road and acting accordingly. Detection of the emergency
vehicle is carried out in a variety of ways, and not unlike how
Figure 1
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