US Patent Issued to Waymo on Sept. 29 for "Testing situational awareness of drivers tasked with monitoring a vehicle operating in an autonomous driving mode" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 30 -- United States Patent no. 12,746,950, issued on Sept. 29, was assigned to Waymo LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).

"Testing situational awareness of drivers tasked with monitoring a vehicle operating in an autonomous driving mode" was invented by Keith Hutchings (San Francisco), Ilmo van der Lowe (Fremont, Calif.) and Vasily Starostenko (San Jose, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Aspects of the disclosure relate to testing situational awareness of a test driver tasked with monitoring the driving of a vehicle operating in an autonomous driving mode. For instance, a signal that indicates that the test driver may be distracted may be identified. Based on the signal, th...