Two separate patents published by the US Patent & Trademark Office on July 26, 2018 from tech giants Apple and Amazon show that the two companies are imagining autonomous vehicles that can not only identify the passengers, but make the ride more personalized depending on who is in the car.
The patent filed by Apple, Inc., titled “Comfort Profiles“, and the patent filed by Amazon Technologies, Inc, “Passenger Profiles for Autonomous Vehicles” both describe developing AV systems that can provide personalized driving experiences.
Apple’s patent, filed in September 2016, describes a system that uses facial recognition to identify the passenger in the driver’s seat and then have the AV software customize their driving experience – how the car brakes, turns, and generally drives. The patent also outliners that this AV system would monitor their reaction to different events in real-time.
Amazon’s patent, filed in March of this year, looks to monitor the whole car, not just the person in the driver’s seat. Amazon looks to develop “Passenger Profiles” that identify, for example, if a child is in the car will enable a child lock for the door during the duration of the trip.
Amazon looks to identify users by facial recognition, voice recognition and, perhaps, communicating with a person’s smartphone.
CB Insights notes that while neither company is looking to actually build consumer AVs at this moment in time, they are “working quickly” to develop software for AVs.
