Nvidia files patent to help self-driving cars detect emergency vehicles

Nvidia may have come up with a solution to one of autonomous cars’ biggest challenges – how they deal with emergency vehicles on the road.

Self-driving vehicles’ inability to respond in the same spontaneous way as human drivers has led some to question whether true autonomy will ever be achieved and the potential problems were highlighted recently in an incident in San Francisco.

A Cruise self-driving taxi inadvertently blocked a fire truck for a potentially life-threatening 25 seconds before the situation was alleviated by a human driver stepping in to move another vehicle.

Now artificial intelligence expert Nvidia – which has worked with some of the world’s biggest automakers, including Mercedes, Jaguar Land Rover, Hyundai and Volvo – has filed a patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, that may prevent similar situations from happening again in future.

The idea would essentially mean using a specially designed system containing microphones to identify and respond to different emergency vehicles.

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