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Comment by Wilya | Hacker News Reader

The patent is about reading a symbol on the ground that triggers the reading of a QR-code to get precise GPS location. Roughly.

Actually, the QR-code (or equivalent) is used to fetch "instructions for performing the autonomous vehicle instruction" (which could be anything).

And the QR-code can be replaced by a lot of things (radio signal, etc).

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Yeah, it'd be nice if more people read patent claims before passing judgement.

I took the obvious practical implementation of this to be a method to guide autonomous vehicles into a parking lot/structure. The car rolls up to the landing strip, the driver gets out, the car switches to autonomous mode, gets the connection information to the parking management server, asks for and receives a spot assignment and instructions on getting there, etc.

GPS and map data are simply insufficient to handle autonomous parking. There are precious few universals in parking laws, customs, lot-flow, etc. And automatic parking is one of the unavoidable expectations of self-driving cars.

it'd be nice if more people read patent claims before passing judgement

Unlikely; that would put a real damper on the amount of righteous vitriol people can muster.

> it'd be nice if more people read patent claims before passing judgement.

It'd also be nice if patents were written in a language that made them readily understandable. Then more people might read them. I'm sure I'm not the only person who finds them obscure bordering on incomprehensible.

If you want more people to read patents, you need to make them more understandable (as you say), and get rid of treble damages for potentially accidental infringement of a patent you "should have" been aware of because you were reading patents.

'Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.'

Make things as vague as possible while still patentable, and no clearer.

I find them easy to read. It's a style imposed by the need to be exhaustively specific. Just keep at it, you get used to it.

In many cases, it is exactly their intention to write the patent in that obscure way, in order to have more wiggle room, and in most cases it's lawyers who write those patents, not engineers.

And automatic parking is one of the unavoidable expectations of self-driving cars.

Actually, I would be perfectly content if I only had to park my car, but it drove itself from just outside the source parking lot (or street) and the destination one.

And just not having to drive on freeways (a much more controlled environment than usual roads) would be incredibly useful :)

I think this would be a perfect opportunity to change the Title here on HN. Avoiding flame-bait is always a worth cause.

Suggestion: "Google awarded patent involved with driver-less vehicles"

Does anyone know how this works in practice?

Are any measures taken to prevent someone from spray-painting a rogue QR code on the ground to reroute traffic?

You'll need a license to purchase spray paint, of course - what are you, some kind of anarchist?

Are there any measures in place today preventing someone from throwing road spikes on a busy interstate?

There are laws, and social mores - but those certainly don't stop people from hacking road signs or removing traffic signals.(1,2) Moreover, unlike spikes on the road, a tampered-with indicator might not be immediately obvious, even in its effects.

Anyway, I finally had a chance to read through the patent; it's enough of a concern that they specifically address it:

"In some embodiments, the data provided by the reference indicator 250 may be encoded or cryptographically signed for security purposes. By providing encoded or cryptographically signed data, the ability for a third party to disrupt the autonomous vehicles may be mitigated."

(1) http://www.google.com/search?q=sign+hacking (2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_sign_theft

Presumably based on the wording of the patent, the QR code just contains a URL from which to fetch the actually instructions for the car. Thus I would assume there are security measures built into the instruction retrieval, SSL or some other authentication/encryption scheme. Thus simply changing the QR code wouldn't allow forged instructions to be sent to the car, you'd have to break the security on the data link.

Could be an interesting MITM attack.

or how about winter, when there is snow on the ground

Very true, but that still leaves plenty of road.

The data in the QR code could be encrypted and include geographical position that can be checked by the car.

This way you can't make your own and copied QR codes won't work.

Symbols on the ground are infrastructure, you should not be able to patent a thing like that. Imagine every company that makes vehicles having to license someone else's tech in order to be able to use public roads, or a huge variety (one for every brand) of competing symbols polluting the roads.

Signs on roads == traffic signs, open formats and readable by everybody.

They won't be called public roads when this happens.

The person who invented the original traffic signal patented it in 1923 (http://www.google.com/patents?id=EHJoAAAAEBAJ&printsec=f...). The idea was unique, novel, and non-obvious at the time. It's easy to see an invention now that is ubiquitous and say that it's obvious.

It is not 1923.

Stuff like this makes me twitch. Why are researchers so keen to have my car controlled by radio tags? The potential for abuse is seemingly never discussed because I feel that admitting it will kill this idea stone dead, as it should.

Are you implying that researchers want to take control of your autonomous vehicle on behalf of the government or some overreaching corporation? The marker/URL scheme is just a solution to the problem of delivering instructions when needed, I don't think it's malicious.

I think the implication is that researchers aren't discussing the possibility of someone else using their system to take control of your car. If you are security conscious, and your car can be controlled externally, you might want to assume that it will be controlled externally until you can prove otherwise.

Look at it this way: if driverless cars are widely adopted in Country A, and the new Country A government decides to go rogue and oppressive on its citizens, the rogue government could prevent people from getting to protests by shutting their cars down remotely.

Most protests take place in cities, where one can walk. What you describe is as 'first world problem.' In repressive countries, the government just sends out some troops to establish a checkpoint and stop cars by pointing guns at the drivers. No special technology required.

Let's suppose "Country A" is a country that is subject to first world problems, and that many of Country A's angry citizens are in suburbs and semi-rural areas within driving distance of ideal protest zones, but they want to express their anger in person.

There's no need for fancy engineering to prevent driving to a protest. Most cities already have traffic control mechanisms in place - bridges, toll booths, tunnels - that are far simpler and harder to work around. I believe New York City has shut down various passages into Manhattan in response to threats or protests over the past few years.

Sure, but it's significantly easier for a small group of people (a government, hackers, whoever) to remotely disable someone's car than it is to mobilize enough police to have the same effect. Believe me, I want self-driving cars. But I want my car under my control, even if I'm not literally at the wheel.

I'd take issue with your definition of "easy". Even if we had self-driving cars today, it would still be a matter of a phone call to get major traffic arteries closed, whereas there's no guarantee that any group of individuals could work out a way to turn off the cars. You're comparing a known, implemented process with a hypothetical possibility. Similarly, terrorists _could_ conceivably hack their way into a traffic control system, but it's a lot more likely they'd simply try to take over a plane with brute force.

This is similar to "tin hat" theories: they favor the dramatic and insidious, but unlikely, fear over the much more imminent and mundane problem.

I'm more than willing to give up the right to absolute control over my vehicle in return for better safety and faster commutes. The lives saved in both time and accidents would far outweigh the remote possibility that it would be used as an instrument of oppression. Maybe folks can control their own vehicle when off of major arteries, but be required to give up control on heavily shared routes (the same as they have to when taking public transportation.)

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