US Patent Issued to Waymo on Feb. 17 for "Identifying a customer of an autonomous vehicle" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,552,416, issued on Feb. 17, was assigned to Waymo LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).

"Identifying a customer of an autonomous vehicle" was invented by Clement Wright (San Francisco), Lauren Schwendimann (Burlingame, Calif.), Maria Moon (Mountain View, Calif.), Kevin Malta (Mountain View, Calif.), Ganesh Balachandran (Mountain View, Calif.), Jonathan Pedersen (San Francisco) and Daniella Gutlansky (San Francisco).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The technology employs a holistic approach to passenger pickups and other wayfinding situations. This includes identifying where passengers are relative to the vehicle and/or the pickup location. Informati...