Google patent reveals how driverless cars recognise hand signals

Remember those hand signals you haven't used since you did Cycling Proficiency because you discovered having your hands on the brakes in traffic was more life-preserving than waving at motorists? Better brush up on them if Google's self-driving cars ever make it to the roads.

Matt McFarland of the Washington Post reports that Google has patented a way for its driverless cars to recognise cyclists' hand signals.

Google announced that its car technology could anticipate cyclists' movements from hand signals in this video last year:

Google has now revealed that what its system looks out for is the rider's hands, and it assesses their distance from the rider's head to determine whether it's seeing a left turn signal, a right turn signal or the dropped left hand that designates a stop in North America.

The car figures all this out from data collected by cameras, radar and lidar (the equivalent of radar, but using lasers instead of beams of radio waves) processed by its onboard computer.

Google's patent lists a broad range of things the car could do with the data it accumulates, including learning to better recognise what is and isn't a cyclist and a hand signal.

How Google's driverless car sees a signalling cyclist

That's not to say the system actually does that. Patents are written in a special language all of their own that attempts to encompass all possibilities arising from the technology to protect other ideas the inventor may have. But it hints at what Google's thinking: not just cars that recognise other road users, but that get better at doing so with practice.

For those who like wrapping their brains around patentese, the whole thing is on line: Cyclist hand signal detection by an autonomous vehicle.

The patent doesn't mention whether Google's system will be able to recognise any of the numerous signals cyclists use for "You almost killed me, you idiot," when the car is being driven manually or whether it will then administer suitable chastisement to the driver. But it sounds like it'll learn them quickly enough.