A month after one of Google’s self driving cars brushed with a municipal bus, Google has secured a patent for bus detection and avoid such accidents in future.
The patent is titled "Bus Detection for an Autonomous Vehicle."
In the patent, the tech giant gave details about how the self-driving car can recognize a bus from its database of images.
The patent also details the methods through which it can detect the size of vehicles and how the car can slow down or maneuver in the midst of such vehicles to avoid collision.
If there is a school bus that the autonomous car comes across, then there are certain cues that the software can use to recognize the school bus.
These include the size of the bus itself, the paint of the bus, whether or not 'school bus' is written on it or not.
Depending on these cues, the autonomous car will take important safety steps to avoid any accidents.
Apart from these the patent also details about how to drive in an intersection when a school bus is detected and how to drive when there are other vehicles.
On the day of the accident, Google actually hit a regular bus and not a school bus.
Some people now believe that had the autonomous vehicle been updated with this patented software, that particular collision could have been avoided.
After this incident, there are reports that Google has updated its software and has rigorously tested the software to make sure that such incidents never happen again.
Image: Google's Self-driving SUV in Kirkland. Photo: Courtesy of Google
