Bangalore: Technology giant Google has won a patent for its dream project of Driverless cars. Google had applied for the patent in the month of May this year but did not make it public at that time.

The patent titled “transitioning mixed mode vehicle to autonomous mode” refers to the use of Artificial intelligence for controlling the car in various situations including finding a proper parking place. The technology uses a secured version of cruise control.

The driver will have to stop the vehicle at a predefined “landing strip” in order to transfer the car to an autonomous mode. The sensors in the car will detect the landing strips which are equipped with QR codes, which is a 2D bar code. On logging the information embedded in the QR code into the internet, the GPS will help the car to identify the exact location. According to the patent, Landing strip also indicates that “the vehicle is parked in a position where it can be transferred to an autonomous or driverless state”. Once the “Brain” of the car receives the autonomous instructions, it uses sensors, cameras and GPS to guide itself through the obstacles into the available parking space. The machine can also be programmed to wait for a particular time at a particular point say, at the park and to return to the previous point in a particular span of time.

Google has been demonstrating the machine in its campus since early this year. Various prototypes have been made by many companies but this is for the first time a company has been awarded a patent in this regard. The patent will allow Google to restrict other companies from using the similar technology to switch their cars between human and auto modes and will also help Google with an increase in revenue as they can charge a fee for the license to use their technology in the automobiles.