Tag: Patents

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 3

“They call it a landing strip. In my mind this is the same as having a sign over the road telling you where you are.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

 

Transitioning a mixed-mode vehicle to autonomous mode

I recently run into this article. I browsed through the patent, here are a few comments. Note: this analysis was originally done before we developed the analysis template so the approach differs a little from the rest.

Figure 1.

 

TIER 1: SUMMARY

This patent seems to describe a way of reading a reference indicator (e.g. a marking in the road) and using this info to both determine the exact location of the car and to retrieve data that the indicator points to. Basically there would be a QR code in the road at some location, which is possibly a place where the vehicle stops. They call it a landing strip. In my mind this is the same as having a sign over the road telling you where you are. What about snow and ice? It is difficult to read the QR code if it is under snow. This may have been overlooked as all the inventors seem to be from California, maybe Mountain View, and according to wikipedia snow isn’t really a big problem there. But to be fair, they do indicate that using RF technologies could be used to implement the same functionality. It can, but getting the same location accuracy would be more challenging.

Is there any harm in this patent being granted? There might be if they manage to push through the idea that a computer reading road signs and taking actions based on that is now a google monopoly. It might be difficult for Google or anyone else to push through such a wide interpretation of this patent but who has the money to challenge them?

While the ideas are somewhat useful they are not that innovative. There can be several reasons for this, one is that the best parts of the application needed to be dropped during the examination (due to prior art) by the patent office but they decided to go through with it anyway. A more cynical view might be that just before the filing date someone decided that the driverless car thing might go forward and we need to patent something stat. To be complete it is worth mentioning that I may just have fallen for the trap that I have seen many times before: things are much more obvious after someone has written them down.

 

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

As usual the description includes a lot of stuff that is already known or otherwise obvious, for example about a page is used to describe the computer system that might be running the logic needed to use the indicators. I’m not very skilled in the art of autonomous vehicles but my feeling is that the description didn’t really include anything that the public would benefit from. This is mainly because reading a QR code or other indicator is exactly analogous to what one does when reading a sign with location information. Adding the use of an url to retrieve instructions doesn’t really make a difference in the inventiveness department. I’m left wondering what was the original idea that they invented and at what point was it removed from the patent? Also, the title and the description don’t really match. While this is nine kinds of bad when writing a school assignment it might be good for a patent (if you are the inventor) as it is more difficult for the competitors to find the information.

This patent might not be that difficult to bypass. In the short term just record the orientation and location of many road signs and use the vehicle’s approximate location from GPS or sensors to check which sign it is and then retrieve this info from a database.

 

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

If the QR code (indicator) includes position and orientation (of the indicator) a camera can be used to get a very accurate position, “easily” with in millimeters related to the indicator. This could be useful in a few situations:

  • There is no GPS coverage
  • The GPS location accuracy is not enough to resolve the location ambiguity due to say roads being on top of each other. This can usually be deduced from the path history, but it is good to have some redundancy, if there is reboot or something.
  • On a bridge, tunnel or similar location a Lidar or radar may not have enough information as the environment is completely built or “empty”
  • The environment has been changed beyond recognition due to construction etc. I have understood that the google approach uses prior knowledge of the environment to determine the location by comparing sensor info to database. It might be that if the road has been closed for changes that the environment, not to mention road location has changed drastically. In such a case the QR code could have info on how to cross the changed part of the road until the database has been updated by the passing vehicles.

It looks like these ideas predate the lidar approach but this has been filed on May, 2011 (now is 27 July, 2012) and as long as I know google’s lidar tech using Prius is older than that. So they may have been thinking about one of the bullets above where it would be quite handy say if there is a construction in a tunnel and vehicles need to be told what to do. It is worth noting that inertial sensors can be used for fairly accurate guidance for a short while and even dead reckoning is likely good enough to avoid a couple of cones and a steamroller if it is in a designated area. Doesn’t have much to do with transitioning to autonomous mode though.

After reading the claims I have two things in my mind:

  1. I can recognize the description from the claims, which is nice and not always the case
  2. If they manage to get another patent where they define wetware to be a computer I will need to start paying licensing fees every time I drive a car.

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 2

“Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

DIAGNOSIS AND REPAIR FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES


This patent is analyzed as part of a series of Google driverless car patents and applications. It is an emerging technology area which, I feel, will have a significant impact in 7-20 year time frame, perhaps even earlier. Existing Intellectual Property will make a difference on how the field develops.



Figure 1.


TIER 1: SUMMARY

A system where sensor information is used to determine wear or damage to parts of the vehicle, this information is then combined with information from environmental sensors and with map data to alter behaviour of the vehicle. For example: if the brakes are worn the system would use smaller deceleration than when the brakes are new. This is done to extend the life of the brakes, presumably until they can be overhauled. While the claims don’t seem to include it, the description also introduces a possibility for the vehicle to automatically seek a repair facility.

If this application is granted as is, it would likely cover some fundamental aspects of automated vehicles. It would cover a situation where external sensors indicate water on the road and the vehicle is able to sense significant tire wear and then decelerates to avoid hydroplaning. The current application doesn’t even attempt to explain how any of this is done; it is a description of a system that decides between different actions based on sensor and other inputs. Effectively they attempt to patent the exact thing every good driver does.

It should be noted that while the claims give an impression that this is about cars, it can be considered to cover other types of vehicles such as airplanes. In fact in the description  trucks, motorcycles, busses, boats, airplanes, helicopters, lawnmowers, recreational vehicles, amusement park vehicles, trams, golf carts, trains and trolleys are mentioned as examples of vehicles.

Looking at the news, it seems driverless car development is all about sensor fusion. Adequate sensor technologies are available, but putting together a system that makes sense of all the information takes a lot of work. Protecting solutions to problems that are encountered during development is standard practice. If granted this would in a fairly broad manner give Google a handle over an important optimization aspect of driverless vehicles.

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

Using a FEM model incorporating current sensor information to predict the response of the vehicle to current conditions could be used to change the behaviour without resorting to selecting from a list of possible actions. It is difficult to say if this differs enough from the language of the claims to be outside the scope of this application, but it could be useful in any case.

The obvious bypass route is to not use information about damage or wear to components internal to the vehicle. This however could restrict how aggressively the computer could use the vehicle as it would in some cases need to make a worst case assumption about the state of vehicle systems.

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The inventive step seems to be missing so discussion of novelty is a bit academic, but looking at novelty of the different parts can show that their combination is fairly obvious. Using sensors to monitor the internal wear and damage is a known technology. By way of example: a Yamaha two stroke outboard motor I used at least a decade ago had an internal oil tank. In case the motor was out of oil it reduced the available power to avoid engine damage. I remember this as it happened to me while I was crossing a shipping lane. It was quite exciting for a while, as there was a largish ferry approaching a couple of kilometers away and I judged that if I failed in filling the tank I might not have enough time to get clear. As another example: automobile engine management systems may change to a different throttle response and ignition timing in case they lose some sensors feeding information regarding the state of the engine.

It is also common to have an indicator in the car that warns when the outside temperature is close to freezing. Several current models also offer systems that read speed limit signs with a camera and give this information to the driver. Information about automated speed traps can be downloaded to navigation devices.

Fusing all this information provided by these prior technologies is clearly necessary in an autonomous vehicle. It might be an invention if a novel way of doing this was shown, but is not enough to tell that there is a problem in need of a solution. To go back to my claim that this is what drivers do all the time; it might be an invention to show how to do, with a computer, what happens inside the head of the driver. This is because the prior knowledge on that is pretty much missing.

The description and figures are easy to follow, apart of some patentese which needs a couple of passes before being understood. Not much new is offered so the usefulness of the description to society is low. There doesn’t appear to be a step change from prior technology or knowledge so the invention is missing.

The claims are pretty straight forward and they clearly are derived from the description. Some elements seem to be missing though, like the idea where the vehicle checks in to a maintenance facility when it detects something in need of fixing. But this is likely well covered in sci-fi so it would not be new.

Troglodyte: Driverless vehicles 1

“This is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.”

The purpose of Project Troglodyte is to hunt for bad patents and to show what went wrong. For more information, see the  web page.

 

TRAFFIC SIGNAL MAPPING AND DETECTION

I have been interested in driverless vehicles for years and I like to read patents, so why not combine the two and share my thoughts. This is a short analysis of a Google US patent application, you can find the original here.



Figure 1.

 

TIER 1: SUMMARY

Contents in one sentence: mapping of traffic lights to enable real time status detection of those lights by vehicles. The description is not limited to automated vehicles, rather what is described is a general system of collecting location and orientation information of traffic lights and use of the results in the form of a map to enable detection of the state of said lights at a later time. When reading the patent I got the feeling that this is solid engineering but I didn’t get the “hey this is clever” reaction which is a sort of indicator for inventiveness.

The claims are not limited to a large database that all the vehicles would use to get the traffic light location information, it would also cover saving the same information in the cars own systems. I.e. it would not be possible for your car to store information of where the lights are on the routes you often drive, that is unless it had a licence from google to use.

This application seems to be intended to create difficulties for anyone who wishes to create a map of traffic lights for the purpose of guiding automated vehicles. It could give Google an advantage as creating and especially maintaining such a map by other means could pose some difficulties. Secondly there is a possibility that if it is granted in its current form Google might be able to prevent others from using information of traffic light location to help real time detection of the light state. As part of a portfolio of automated driving patents it could have some value, although there are other methods of getting the same information to car systems. The nice thing about the mapping idea is that it requires very little liaison with authorities maintaining the traffic system.

If the world is going to move to fully automated vehicles traffic lights are probably not needed in the sense they are currently used. Thus this patent would only be useful during a transition period, but the transition could easily be longer than the duration of the protection a patent offers

It is a bit scary that the description gives information on known triangulation and image recognition technologies as this might open a lot of trolling opportunities when the claims are widely interpreted.

TIER 2: AVOIDING LICENSING

An alternate to the map described in this document could be to determine when the light changes occur and from several of these time stamps create a state machine with transitions at known times. The timing information could then be distributed from the cloud to vehicles on their way to the same intersection. Knowing which light should be active would make it a bit faster to find the fixtures from larger images that result from not knowing the location of the traffic light. This would not need a map of locations of the traffic lights, it would only be a map of traffic light state machines with much more lax accuracy requirements . Vehicles could also take advantage of this information to optimize speed, thus reducing maximum accelerations and likely speed and therefore also lowering the likelihood of accidents or at least make the results less severe.

In the discussion of background it is mentioned that efforts have been made to develop systems that use radio transmission of traffic light state but the infrastructure investment is seen as an obstacle. Why not use existing radio infra to transmit the information? A scheme where the traffic light state is available on the net and read through a cellular data connection would need less tampering with the infrastructure. This of course only works in places where the traffic lights are centrally controlled.

The obvious bypassing technique is to not have a map of traffic lights and scan for them continually in the same general direction where drivers look for them. The cost of this surely will become lower as more and more computational power becomes available. One way of avoiding the use of a map could be to ask the vehicles in front of you: where did they find the light. Vehicle to vehicle communications is likely going to be ubiquitous before driverless cars, so there is a good chance that at some point only software development is required to implement exchange of the information. Getting the advantage of making the map in good weather and lighting conditions is more difficult to achieve with other methods.

TIER 3: TECHNICAL ANALYSIS

The description offers a fair explanation of the intended system though most of the details must be known technology. Triangulation and related methods are a widely used technology as is identification of objects with roughly known characteristics from images. Saving the location and characteristics of the identified objects in a database that can be called a map is likewise a well known approach for representing data in an accessible format.

At one point there is talk about triangulation and at the same time about using a sphere to determine which labels (i.e. location of traffic light in an image) will be associated with each other. Later it is mentioned that this determination may be part of an analysis of an image sequence, using a template to follow the traffic light in the consecutive images. At some point a first location determination needs to be done to get a center for the uncertainty sphere. A circular logic seems to be in use.

Knowing the location of the traffic lights before detection will likely lower the false interpretation rate especially if the conditions at the time of detection are difficult: for example there is fog, difficult lighting conditions for the cameras or heavy rain. It will also lower the computational intensity and thus lower the cost. This may be a significant advantage.

Several different types of traffic lights are in use around the world but the description is very light on how these could be identified. This is especially a problem in the map creation phase as it is crucial to make correct interpretations. If successful this effort would make the map more valuable as the vehicle would only need to identify the traffic light fixture and could use the map to identify positions of different types of lights (arrows etc.)

Value of the description is lowered by some pretty standard patent speak, for example why draw a flowchart and then say the boxes can be in any order? Is it because the examiners like flow charts and not bullet point lists? In the current form it reduces the value of the flow chart to zero, all of the text it contains is already in the description.

While creating a system that does the mapping is certainly not a trivial undertaking I find it difficult to see what is the inventive step. The mix of patent speak and technical writing in the description could effectively hide it but I would argue that the description is pretty much what most skilled in the art would try after they realise that real time identification takes too much processing power and results in too many errors.

Generally the claims seem to refer to the text in the description part and to the images.

The claims curiously omit other than color based identification of the lights (for example 20), embedded image, shape, frequency etc. could also be used for identification. With LED traffic lights it might even be possible to do a software upgrade to make them blink fast enough to show this in a row read camera sensor. Further, the color identification scheme is lacking in detail. Color is mentioned but not intensity, if the position of each intended signal is known, then it is possible to identify the state from just the relative intensity of the three indicators. Further, depending on the color of the surrounding light being reflected from the traffic light and the color of the light emitted from the traffic light there might not be a large difference in color between the on and off states anyway.

 

Trolling on the human rights

If I were a patent troll, which universal human right would I start abusing next?

Patents and humanitarian activity (and how patents can kill humanitarian activity) have been covered on this blog before (see the SMOS project). I am in a slightly cynical mood, so I will now pretend to be a strategist for a patent troll (a “non-practicing entity”). How could I best abuse the world?

Note: I am NOT talking about the way big companies (like, say, Monsanto) are perhaps strong-arming the patent system. Compared to me, Monsanto are the good guys. They at least have at some point put some money into some R&D, and produce something. All I plan to do is to exploit quirks in the patent system.

I would want my target industries to have three key criteria:

  1. They have little or no experience with IPR, and none with trolls. The best attack is when the target has no idea what hit him.
  2. They produce things which every person needs to have. Ideally, things that are considered human rights. That way, the targets have no real option except to accede to my demands (or else break IP law).
  3. (Optional): Some type of vendor lock-in. This means that the customer is tied to one specific vendor for all his needs. Many people realize that the vendor can then abuse the customer at will. Most people do not realize that a troll can then abuse both the vendor and the customer at will.

An nice target list is provided by the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, especially Articles 25-26.  There are many potential attacks, but here I will focus only on a few novel ideas.

Article 25.

  1. Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
  2. Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Food / clean water

This is where I would strike, first and foremost, no hesitation.  Water-purification technologies are the choicest target because they fulfill all key criteria (they are essential, people don’t expect attacks, and there are lock-ins). Some target markets (for example oil-rich desert countries) are rich enough to provide considerable blackmail money.

Methods to create potable drinking water would be my number one focus. It is a high-tech activity, with serious companies doing serious R&D work. An overly broad patent (either created now, or bought from a suitable player, or an fire sale after a bankruptcy) could be a major block.

I would target companies close to a breakthrough, and file/buy a huge number patents around the same area. Here’s a secret: It doesn’t really matter whether or not the patents are truly valid. All one needs to do is to strike at a strategic moment, and announce that one has a hundred patents which company X is infringing. This is a typical troll strategy.

The strategic moment: the instant a major water-cleaning plant has started providing water to a large city (Dubai, Nairobi, Mumbai, Dhaka). Even a brief court injunction on the operation of a key water plant could be problematic to a whole city. The blackmail potential is very high.

(Normally, one would expect a reasonable government to act like India in the medicine case discussed below, and simply ignore the blackmail and the the injunction. However, consider an extremely poor and corrupt country with the leading elite fully tied to foreign interests… it might not do the sane thing).

Water distribution would be even more fruitful, since it is in practice impossible to set up a competing water and sewage network overnight. There is a definite vendor lock-in in that business. However, the technology is so simple that there is little IPR to abuse.

Medical care

Medical care would be a lucrative area for attack, but… filing spurious patents is difficult in this area. The major drug manufacturers are well protected by patent thickets.  There is also an active backlash against medical patents, which means that criterion 1 is no longer satisfied. Everyone is expecting attacks. For example, India is banning branded drugs. Governments and NGOS’s are already on their toes, unlike the water case. I would pass on this.

Communications

I would put communications in this category as well. I am not the only one; the ITU (the telecommunications branch of the United Nations) is waking up to the patent wars in the telecoms industry, and their effect on innovation (see for example here). This war was also addressed in our SMOS project.

The ITU initiative is largely an attack on patent trolls. A cynic might expect that since the big companies have deep pockets to affect the process, and governments have their own telecom industries to protect, the end result will be an even deeper monopoly on development by a few megacompanies, with no benefit for poor countries. Time will show.

In any case, while trolling the telecoms industry is currently all the rage, the competition is getting harsh, there is little chance for a surprise attack, and a serious backlash is likely. I would look elsewhere.

Motherhood and childhood

Childhood diarrhea is one of the worst killers in the world, and could largely be avoided by providing clean water and saline solution. A patent on a particular type of saline solution could provide interesting leverage to an utterly sociopathic troll. However, in practice it is relatively easy for medical professionals to work around the IPR by substituting slightly different components. Thus, while intriguing, the work-arounds make trolling difficult.

Article 26.

  1.  Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
  2. Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
  3.  Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

(Distance) education

Low-cost distance learning technologies are interesting, especially as they provide a very low-cost alternative in extremely poor countries. The best course of attack would be cases where a given company has achieved an effective lock-in on the overall technology and has created a walled garden.

A walled garden means that one company controls all aspects of the material: the hardware, the software, and the content. Apple is the best-known example of this strategy,  followed perhaps by Microsoft and Google (whose lock-in does not extend fully to hardware though). The walled garden can create many type of problems for customers; for example, there have been cases where critically-needed applications have been pre-emptively deleted from the AppStore if Apple has feared litigation.

These companies have pockets deep enough to fight the trolls, but those same pockets can also bribe the trolls. I would frame the attack behind the scenes, making the problems appear to be the fault of the company, as in the AppStore case above. Since their brand names are absolutely crucial to them, they would be more  likely to pay off (though of course they also have armies of lawyers. The balance is difficult).

A public-service note: attacks like this could be avoided by using open-source solutions, or at least by minimizing vendor lock-in. A sure way to create problems of this type is to accept a walled garden, however attractive it might look in the short run.

Am I serious? Yes and no.

No. If I actually wanted to do this, I wouldn’t write about it. Profit is made by keeping absolutely silent and working in the shadows.

Yes. The basic principles are valid. The exact sample cases I’ve suggested might or might not work. I have outlined some techniques for avoiding attacks of this type (most importantly avoiding walled gardens), but where there is money, there will be trolls.

Rest assured: there are people out there thinking precisely along these lines. Globally, masses of people are now being downsized who have the competence for this, families to feed, and negotiable moral values.  (To be consistently cynical: I am among them. I could  be good at this. We all like to think we’re on the side of the angels, but we’re not).

If someone has good ideas on how to protect the world against them (us?), I would appreciate hearing those ideas.

UN

 

Examiner of Silly Patents 3: Monkey thermometer

To take a break from all the gloom and doom of the last few week’s blogs, here is a different kind of look at patents. Very different.

Every now and then I will take a silly patent and pretend it isn’t silly. I will analyze and defend it in all faux-seriousness (see disclaimer at the end).  Usually I cannot defend it, but learn something in the process anyways.

From 1987, US 4,634,021 (Release mechanism) has a self-explanatory picture.

“A release mechanism is disclosed for releasing an object such as a ball from a body under the force of gravity. A bimetallic element obstructs or opens an opening in the body for retaining or releasing the object depending upon the temperature of the bimetallic element. The release mechanism may be incorporated into a novelty “brass monkey” for “emasculating” the monkey when the temperature decreases to a predetermined temperature at which the balls in the “brass monkey” are permitted to drop to a base which is designed to produce an audible sound when struck by the balls”.

I always try to give positive feedback and constructive criticism. In this particular case, the positive feedback is immediate and obvious. Anyone with the self-confidence to eternally attach his name to a drawing like this deserves our respect. Strength through goofiness.

On the constructive criticism side, there is more to be said. I believe that the inventor did not choose an optimal strategy to protect his excellent idea of using an emasculated monkey as a thermometer.

In my view, by patenting the inventor divulged too much information and gave the competition an unnecessary advantage. He opened his strategy, without really protecting it. Fundamentally, there seem to be too many workarounds around this patent.

For example, this patent most likely does not cover other animals. Castrating a donkey to tell the temperature would almost certainly be possible despite this patent. Using a human being would potentially lead to a court case. The arguments would revolve around whether a human being is biologically simian enough to be considered a special case of a monkey. I hesitate to speculate how that court case would end.

There are also non-testicular extensions of this idea which could have been pursued in the patent. In particular, something like a system with a French Revolution theme could present a similar user experience: when it gets cold, Marie Antoinette’s head is chopped off with a clang. This patent does not prevent such a user interface from being implemented.

There are also technical workarounds.  A bimetallic temperature valve is well-known. However, if the bimetallic valve were to be replaced by a sphincter-like structure, it is probable that the patent would not cover it.

What about the business case?  It is possible that this patent has indeed hit a niche which has not been extensively filled. I did not really find anything in the patent literature that would imply that this is a major technology area.

A Google search for “novelty thermometer” shows examples of today’s state of the art. I believe the figure below has some commonality in spirit with the patent. A rectal thermometer in a duck is used to measure bath water temperature. It is an unexpected combination.

Source: Screen capture.

I believe that a design patent to cover just the monkey implementation could have been more cost-effective.  Design patents are cheap to file and have no maintenance fees; on the other hand, they are only valid for 14 years against a utility patent’s 20 years. Alternatively, the inventor could have tried to broaden his patent significantly to cover other animals and user interfaces. That would, however, have raised the costs.

I strongly suspect that the inventor did not manage to make money from this patent. However, that does not in any way detract from the inventive step of this patent; one would not expect the see a thermometer implemented by using the clangs caused when a brass monkey is neutered and its testicles fall off.

Although an engineer type should never venture into aesthetics, I want to say something about artistic values. I find something poignant yet majestic about the figure of the monkey. This is almost worthy of a monument. If I had been the inventor — though I may be alone in feeling this — but if I had been the inventor, I think this figure would make an excellent gravestone. Why not? What could be a better memento for future generation to remember me by? Strength through goofiness is something to celebrate, throughout the generations.

All Examinations of Silly Patents: click here. 

Disclaimer: these analyses have very little to do with anything, and in particular have nothing to do with legal issues. Most of the patents cited are expired (or should be). I do not touch the “claims” section, which is the legally relevant part. These blogs constitute prior art, so that any new any ideas expressed here can no longer be patented.

Translate »