• Jun 6, 2016
• 12 Comments

Google is heavily invested in the idea of self-driven cars and is backing it up by an aggressive set of patents filed every week. The latest in the list of granted patents is U.S. Patent No. 9,352,752 tiled ‘Engaging and disengaging for autonomous driving’, which describes how a driver can switch to a self-driven mode just at the push of a button. The patented system talks about how the travelers can switch ‘On’ and ‘Off’ the self-driving features of a car. The technology works similar to ‘Cruise Control’ where the system beforehand ensures whether it is safe to switch to self-driving mode or not. Going through the patent, it discloses how after the human request, the system checks the surroundings and the car’s current status to ensure it’s in a position to take over the driving. The system can track the car’s location data to assess whether it’s safe to switch to auto pilot mode. It may also ask the driver to change a few settings like turning on auto mode of wipers, slowing down the car to an acceptable speed etc. However, it also states that the driver can regain the controls by simply pressing on the accelerator. Let us hope that Google brings this exciting patent to life in one of their cars.   This article is a part of our series of web articles – Latest from the Greatest. Innovation drives competitiveness! That is the beauty of innovation which fuels every great company to constantly innovate and come up with great ideas, great prototypes and finally great products. Having a patent is absolutely critical and act as a core ingredient to achieve such greatness. Leading companies compete on the impact of their innovations in the marketplace. At Citius Minds, we constantly mine patents to read into the insights into what the future holds. Through these series of web articles, we will be covering latest patents that the leading companies have filed and try to read into how their research is panning out and what great products are lined up for us to grab our hands on.