Patents and self-driving vehicles

European Patent Office (EPO) in November 2018 has published a study on systems for self-driving vehicles (SDV) (https://www.epo.org/service-support/publications.html?pubid=177#tab3). This study shows that there is an increasing interest in investing in this area and that lately there has been a number of patent applications. The reason for this trend lays probably in the fact that SDVs are expected to show up on the market by 2025. In this way, the car manufacturers are trying to connect with advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, wireless communications, and many other software solutions.

In last ten years there have been 18,000 patent applications in the field of SDV. Only in 2017 there have been 4000 of these applications. Compared to 2011, that shows an increase of 330%. Companies that have most of these applications are Samsung, Intel and Qualcomm. Most of the applications have been submitted in Europe and USA, about 1400 inventions in 2017.

These technologies can contribute to road safety, energy efficiency and can lead to less traffic congestion. In this area, the investors are the companies that already manufacture vehicles, as well as software companies, but also some completely new companies on the market. Examples are so called robot-taxi vehicles, which provide transport at smaller speeds, without the driver in urban environments. Robot-taxi vehicles imply automation of driving, relying on multiple sensors, cameras, cloud solutions and technology infrastructures.

Ivan Todorovic