Amazon Patent For Road Guidance System Points To Automated Vehicle Plans

Amazon Fresh grocery delivery trucks parked at a warehouse in June 2013 in Inglewood, California. Amid a flurry of announcements around the development of automated driving technology, online retail behemoth Amazon quietly joined the fray by being granted a patent for communications between autonomous vehicles and roadway management systems. Specifically, U.S. Patent 9,547,986 deals with sharing lane direction and guidance information with self-driving vehicles on roads that have reversible lanes. While the system would seem to deal mainly with on-highway automated vehicles, the proposed system is applicable to "any type of vehicle, including but not limited to cars, trucks, vans, buses, street cars, helicopters, trains, subways, aircrafts, boats, etc., regardless of how powered or driven." The patent contains no information about what Amazon's plans may be, but given that the company already operates a dedicated fleet of semi-trucks hauling goods to and from its distribution centers as well as panel delivery trucks, a move into autonomous driving seems inevitable.