<story><title>Google Awarded Driverless Vehicle Patent</title><url>http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PALL&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=8,078,349.PN.&amp;OS=PN/8,078,349&amp;RS=PN/8,078,349</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stbullard</author><text>Does anyone know how this works in practice?&lt;p&gt;Are any measures taken to prevent someone from spray-painting a rogue QR code on the ground to reroute traffic?</text></item><item><author>Wilya</author><text>The patent is about reading a symbol on the ground that triggers the reading of a QR-code to get precise GPS location. Roughly.&lt;p&gt;Actually, the QR-code (or equivalent) is used to fetch &quot;instructions for performing the autonomous vehicle instruction&quot; (which could be anything).&lt;p&gt;And the QR-code can be replaced by a lot of things (radio signal, etc).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mbell</author><text>Presumably based on the wording of the patent, the QR code just contains a URL from which to fetch the actually instructions for the car.  Thus I would assume there are security measures built into the instruction retrieval, SSL or some other authentication/encryption scheme.  Thus simply changing the QR code wouldn&apos;t allow forged instructions to be sent to the car, you&apos;d have to break the security on the data link.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Awarded Driverless Vehicle Patent</title><url>http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&amp;Sect2=HITOFF&amp;d=PALL&amp;p=1&amp;u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&amp;r=1&amp;f=G&amp;l=50&amp;s1=8,078,349.PN.&amp;OS=PN/8,078,349&amp;RS=PN/8,078,349</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>stbullard</author><text>Does anyone know how this works in practice?&lt;p&gt;Are any measures taken to prevent someone from spray-painting a rogue QR code on the ground to reroute traffic?</text></item><item><author>Wilya</author><text>The patent is about reading a symbol on the ground that triggers the reading of a QR-code to get precise GPS location. Roughly.&lt;p&gt;Actually, the QR-code (or equivalent) is used to fetch &quot;instructions for performing the autonomous vehicle instruction&quot; (which could be anything).&lt;p&gt;And the QR-code can be replaced by a lot of things (radio signal, etc).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cjfont</author><text>Are there any measures in place today preventing someone from throwing road spikes on a busy interstate?</text></comment>