US Patent Issued to Volkswagen Group of America Investments on Feb. 25 for "Enhanced rider pairing for autonomous vehicles" (California, Pennsylvania Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 26 -- United States Patent no. 12,233,878, issued on Feb. 25, was assigned to Volkswagen Group of America Investments LLC (Reston, Va.).

"Enhanced rider pairing for autonomous vehicles" was invented by Shenglong Gao (Sunnyvale, Calif.), Israel Marc Kositsky (Cranberry Township, Pa.), Ramadev Burigsay Hukkeri (Pittsburgh), Thomas Mark Petroff (Gibsonia, Pa.), Scott Plant (San Jose, Calif.), Brett Browning (Pittsburgh) and Shubhashree Venkatesh (Palo Alto, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Devices, systems, and methods are provided for enhanced rider pairing of an autonomous vehicle (AV). A system may pair a first user profile of a first user located at a first locatio...