ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 8 -- United States Patent no. 12,728,839, issued on Sept. 8, was assigned to Waymo LLC (Mountain View, Calif.).
"Method for performing a vehicle assist operation" was invented by Vijaysai Patnaik (San Francisco) and William Grossman (East Palo Alto, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "The technology relates to assisting large self-driving vehicles, such as cargo vehicles, as they maneuver towards and/or park at a destination facility. This may include a given vehicle transitioning between different autonomous driving modes. Such a vehicles may be permitted to drive in a fully autonomous mode on certain roadways for the majority of a trip, but may need to change to a p...