Patent ID: 11900805
Assignee: SONY GROUP CORPORATION
Field: Control (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  B | IPC B  G

Claim 16:
17. A method for a control device configured to support operations of an autonomous vehicle, the method comprising:
wirelessly receiving from one or more other autonomous vehicles driving environment information corresponding to a driving environment detected by one or more other autonomous vehicles:
determining a degree of reliability of the driving environment information received from the one or more other autonomous vehicles,
wherein the degree of reliability is determined based on time information indicating a. time at which the driving environment information was acquired by the one or more other autonomous vehicles,
determining a navigation route based on the degree of reliability of the driving environment information,
controlling a driving system of the autonomous vehicle based on the degree of reliability of the driving environment information on the determined navigation route,
controlling the driving system in a predetermined autonomous driving mode under a condition that the degree of reliability of the driving environment information on the determined navigation route is higher than a first threshold value;
controlling the driving system in a predetermined safe driving mode under a condition that the degree of reliability of the driving environment information on the determined navigation route is lower than the first threshold value, and
controlling the driving system in a manual driving mode under a condition that the degree of reliability of the driving environment information on the determined navigation route is lower than a second threshold value which is lower than the first threshold value, wherein
in the manual driving mode, the driving system allows a driver to intervene in the operations of the autonomous vehicle,
a maximum speed of the autonomous vehicle in the predetermined safe driving mode is lower than a maximum speed of the autonomous vehicle in the predetermined autonomous driving mode and
the first threshold and second threshold values are determined based on the driving environment information.