Ford has filed a patent for an autonomous police car
that could potentially determine if another vehicle violated a traffic law and then take action based on it.
The autonomous police car would obtain an indication of violation of one or more
traffic laws by another vehicle by wirelessly receiving a signal from a remote device or a second vehicle indicating that at least one or more traffic laws were violated, according to the patent
application.
The technology would ‘maneuver the autonomous vehicle to pursue the first vehicle, track a location of first vehicle and control operations related to at least a speed and
steering of the autonomous vehicle based on a result of the tracking,’ states the patent application.
“Routine police tasks, such as issuing tickets for speeding or failure to stop
at a stop sign, can be automated so that human police officers can perform tasks that cannot be automated,” the filing states.
The intent is to create autonomous police vehicles that can
enforce traffic laws and issue tickets and citations to drivers that violate traffic laws.
The filing suggests how the police car could use machine learning tools like deep neural networks to
find good hiding spots to catch traffic violators, such as speeders or red light or stop sign violators.
A driver going through a stop sign may be captured on a surveillance camera or another
vehicle and the data could be sent to the autonomous police car, which also would contain cameras and other devices to identify and track other vehicles.
The autonomous police car could pursue
another vehicle and could message the vehicle being pursued, whether it is being driven by a person or in autonomous driving mode, according to the patent filing.