Google self-driving car patents show plans for ‘sticky’ vehicles that will pick up pedestrians they crash into
‘Ideally, the adhesive coating on the front portion of the vehicle may be activated on contact and will be able to adhere to the pedestrian nearly instantaneously,’ the patent says
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Your support makes all the difference.Google is working on sticky bonnets that will be able to pick up anyone they crash into.
The company has been granted a patent for a glue-type layer that would be added to the front end of vehicles, whether self-driving or not. If they happened to run into someone who was walking along, the adhesive layer would pick them up rather than having them bounce off.
“Ideally, the adhesive coating on the front portion of the vehicle may be activated on contact and will be able to adhere to the pedestrian nearly instantaneously,” the patent reads.
“This instantaneous or nearly-instantaneous action may help to constrain the movement of the pedestrian, who may be carried on the front end of the vehicle until the driver of the vehicle (or the vehicle itself in the case of an autonomous vehicle) reacts to the incident and applies the brakes.
“As such both the vehicle and pedestrian may come to a more gradual stop than if the pedestrian bounces off the vehicle.”
Google has been working on self-driving cars – and arguing about their safety – for years. The patent says that it has been created for that work but could work on cars with human drivers too.
The patent points out that work has already been donate ensure that bonnets are built to minimise the damage that a collision with a passenger can do. But it also points out that those technologies do little to mitigate “the secondary impact” – what happens when a person is thrown off the car when it comes to a stop.
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