Patent ID: 11897513
Assignee: YAMAHA HATSUDOKI KABUSHIKI KAISHA
Field: Transport (Mechanical engineering)
Classification: CPC B  G | IPC B  G

Claim 12:
13. An autonomous vehicle comprising:
a vehicle body;
a wheel supported by the vehicle body;
a steering mechanism supported by the vehicle body, and configured to change a direction of travel of the autonomous vehicle;
a driving/braking force generating device supported by the vehicle body, and configured to generate a driving force to drive the autonomous vehicle and a braking force to decelerate the autonomous vehicle;
a plurality of seats supported by the vehicle body, and each configured to be sat on by a passenger; and
an autonomous driving controller including
a processor, and
a non-transitory storage medium containing program instructions,, execution of the program instructions by the processor causing the autonomous driving controller to control the steering mechanism and the driving/braking force generating device to autonomously drive the autonomous vehicle without any driver's manipulation, wherein
the autonomous driving controller is configured to determine whether or not to control the driving/braking force generating device to change the autonomous vehicle from a stopped state to a run state, based on a number of passengers and a number of sitting passengers, and on whether the number of passengers and the number of sitting passengers are equal or not, wherein
said number of passengers is a total number of passengers in the autonomous vehicle, and
said number of sitting passengers is a total number of passengers who are each seated in one of the plurality of seats of the autonomous vehicle.