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What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of driverless cars? Maybe it’s a futuristic version of a cab that can take you from place to place without a human behind the wheel, or something used for deliveries. It may even be a vehicle designed to take up auto racing spots it never was. A new patent filing by Toyota suggests that a much less blatantly flashy feature could be in the maps for driverless cars – although that may make them look good on the outside.
In Jalopnik, Elizabeth Blackstock offers an in-depth review of the patent filing, which is for a system by which driverless cars could determine they were dirty and then go to a nearby car wash to clean themselves. It’s the autonomous vehicle equivalent of realizing it’s time to take a shower.
As Blackstock explains, the system described in the patent detects when a car has been driven on a dirty road or in bad weather. He then contacts a car wash, who informs the car when it can come for a cleaning. The system also allows drivers to opt out of a particular wash if time is of the essence.
It’s an intriguing look at the thought behind this system – and something that could drastically change one of the central tasks of owning a car. And all of this is done by making driverless cars a little more self-aware in unexpected ways.
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