Introduction
The Patent Landscape Report on Communication and Path Prediction Systems for Autonomous Vehicles (AV-CPPS) discusses the development in the Automobile Industry’s Autonomous Vehicles sector with the development of the ICT industry in this 21st century. With the advancement in communication technologies, the AV industry has seen a sharp rise in patent filing since 2014. While the automobile giants like Toyota, GM, Ford, etc. are leading the front, startups like LYFT and AURORA are playing a significant role in transforming the ever dreamt AV tech into reality.
For self-driving cars to be successful, they need to have a system which can intelligently handle the surrounding environment. This can only happen when they will have a sense of the outer world just like humans. Self-driving needs to communicate with the other cars, passengers, and surrounding
Path Prediction is based on either model based or data driven approach. Predicting vehicle trajectories, angle, and speed is important for safe and comfortable driving. Multiple-model algorithms for maneuvering target tracking are used to predict the behaviour of all dynamic objects in the space and corridor, and then based on this, to predict the trajectory of each object. These algorithms evaluate multiple possible maneuvers simultaneously for each object, then correlate them with updated on-road observations.
Patent Search Strategy
This report is based on search strategy around the communication and path prediction aspects of Autonomous Vehicles . The main intention of this searching is identifying important inventions, as well as the scope of current research activities and technical areas in which the inventions are being filed. Using PatSeer, we searched individual publications and then collapsed them to one member per Invention (Simple Families). The publications included in the report are updated as of January 2021.
Innovation Trends
While analyzing patenting trends of last 10 years we can see that, with parallel development in software, telecommunication and sensor technology since 2005 its implications can be seen in automobile industry.
Note: All the applications filed in 2019 and 2020 havent been published yet and so should not be
considered as a trend pattern
Top Companies (Leaders, Challengers and Visionaries)
Companies like Samsung , Nissan , ZF Friedrichshafen have smaller portfolios as compared to others for communication and path prediction application of autonomous vehicles but they can still challenge some of the top companies in terms of the quality of their inventions
Research Activity around the World
Analysis of the top applicant countries show the dominance of China, Japan, USA, Germany, and Korea.
Patent Filing Trends
Since 2015 there is sharp increase in AV related patents this is due to development in IT, data analytics systems like internet of things, neural network, machine learning, artificial intelligence and development of taxi service providers like UBER worldwide, which helped in development of patents related to navigation, route selection, positioning and localization.
Note: All the applications filed in 2019 and 2020 havent been published yet and so should not be considered as a trend pattern.