Keep your hands off the wheel

“I believe in horses. The automobile is a transitory phenomenon”, argued the last German monarch, Emperor Wilhelm II.¹ Nevertheless, cars started to conquer the world and have by now become the individual mobility device par excellence. At the time of Emperor Wilhelm II, the transition from the horse to the car revolutionized mobility. Today, a new fundamental change seems to be imminent: from the passenger-driven car to the autonomous car. Many passionate drivers still find it hard to imagine that soon their car will drive, steer, brake, and park all on its own. The drivers and their driving skills lose in importance. The large automobile manufacturers have long since started the era of autonomous driving. But companies from sectors other than the automotive industry, too, sense new market opportunities. A search in the Derwent World Patent Index (DWPI) on STN impressively shows that R&D activities in this field have been strongly increasing throughout the last five years.²

What lies behind these innovations? Autonomous cars consist of many individual components. Only the intelligent interaction of these components makes the car autonomous. The published patents cover the individual components such as certain driver assistance and safety systems, sensors, and the digital processing of sensor data. These innovations have changed the lives of motorists amazingly fast. Many expensive cars are already equipped with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and sensors. The first inventions in this field, e.g., anti-lock braking system (ABS) and cruise control, have by now become standard for almost all classes and types of cars. So far, truly autonomous cars have only existed as prototypes, but it is planned to use them on public roads within just a few years’ time.

Toyota ranks first

The ranking list of patent applicants in the technology sector of autonomous cars reads like the Who-is-Who of the automotive industry. Also among the top ten are the three automotive suppliers Bosch (DE), Denso (JP) and Valeo (FR). Obviously, these companies have no intention to leave the promising market of autonomous cars to the automobile manufacturers alone. 

And how about Google?

In the press, Google is often mentioned in the same breath with autonomous vehicles. Indeed, our patent analysis has shown that Google, too, is among the very active applicants, albeit not among the top ten. Google follows a different business strategy: It relies on partnerships with leading automobile manufacturers such as Toyota. This means that Google does not have to deal with automobile manufacturing itself and can focus its research on other fields.

Telematics

The word telematics is a combination of “telecommunication” and “informatics”. Inventions in this field deal, for example, with controlling a mobile vehicle via GPS (Global Positioning System). The best known examples for this technology are the navigation systems that are often standard in modern cars. Telematics patents constitute the smallest group of the patents we searched. When analyzing the companies who had filed a patent for a telematics invention in detail we also found other companies besides the large automobile manufacturers.

On the ranks below the dominant automobile manufacturers General Motors and Hyundai Motors there are companies from other industry sectors. Marvell Technology Group, for example, produces telecommunication products, storage devices, and semiconductor products. LG Electronics is another company from the telecommunications sector. Of quite a different sort is the logistics company UPS (United Parcel Service). However, when taking a look at the patents filed by UPS, we quickly recognize why a logistics company, too, should be interested in inventions in the field of telematics.  Telematic devices allow to continuously monitor the delivery trucks, to locate them, to update the calculated time of travel, and to direct them to vacant parking areas. For this purpose, the trucks are equipped with sensors and guided by GPS. There is a permanent exchange of data with a cloud, see patent drawing below.

The modern groom

A further step ahead is the autonomous car park where cars are no longer parked by their drivers but distributed to, parked in, and removed from the parking spaces by robots. The robots fetch the cars from the transfer station and transport them to their parking space. These parking robots are already in use at the car park of Düsseldorf Airport³ in Germany. We have to use our imagination to read from the sober patent drawing below how efficient the parking robot system really is. A robot lifts the car with forks similar to those of a forklift. Then the car, which has been previously measured by means of cameras and sensors, is accurately parked in a space-saving manner. The cars can be very closely packed because no space for maneuvering or leaving the car is required. In addition, the parking system is linked to the flight database. These data tell the system when the car owner will be back, i.e., when his car has to be made available again. The flight passenger can then directly access his car, ready to start and without any waiting time. Thus, we have come full circle to the times of Wilhelm II. When the German Emperor got off his horse, his groom was already waiting to guide the horse to its stable and to bring the saddled horse back for another ride, if needed.

Even if some people still do not want to believe it: The era of autonomous driving has begun. This technology is progressing fast. The German Federal States of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg have already established test tracks on their motorways. Now other public sectors, too, will have to catch up on the new developments. Especially insurance companies are supposed to react, and new laws have to be put into place. Liability issues, ethical principles, and sociological aspects of autonomous driving have not yet been conclusively assessed and are still to be clarified. However, the faculty of law of the University of Würzburg has already established a research unit “RobotRecht”⁴ that deals with the legal issues of man-machine interaction in collaboration with car manufacturers and other industries.

Text and research: Dr. Babett Bolle