Just because a system tells a rider to wait at a particular pickup location does not mean the rider will necessarily be waiting at that particular location. Instead, the person could be waiting across the street, down the street, or even around the block. If the self-driving vehicle goes to the scheduled pickup location, the rider will not see the vehicle.
The key is for the self-driving vehicle to update the pickup location to be the actual waiting location of the rider. In some cases, the self-driving vehicle can automatically update the pickup to be where the rider is actually located. In other cases, the self-driving vehicle can suggest updating the pickup location to be where the rider is standing.
We would love to enable you to integrate these helpful features into your autonomous vehicles.
A person can select a pickup location with every intention of walking to that pickup location to rendezvous with a self-driving vehicle. For example, a person might select to be picked up on the north side of a building but might walk to the east side of the building either due to being confused about which side of the building faces north or simply because the person decides the east side of the building is preferable (due to proximity, traffic, or other factors). A person at a shopping complex might originally schedule a pickup at a first location, but later might accidentally exit the shopping complex at a different location.
A person might think they are waiting on the correct side of the street when really, they are waiting on the opposite side of the street. A person might be sure they are waiting at the correct location along a street when actually they are 100 or more feet away from the pickup location.
The result in all of these cases is frustrated riders who cannot be pickup up because they are not waiting at the scheduled pickup location.
All of these frustrating cases can easily be fixed by updating the pickup location to be the location where the rider is actually waiting.
Here are a few implementation details:
The system determines that a rider is waiting at a location that is not the scheduled pickup location.
In response to realizing the rider is waiting at the wrong location, the system can automatically update the pickup location to be the location where the rider is waiting or the system can suggest a closer pickup location to the rider (e.g., “would you like to be picked up at your current location?).
A location tracking system can know that the rider is waiting at an incorrect location by determining that the rider is not moving (e.g., their movement speed is less than a threshold).
Waiting riders tend to move around a little, so movement speed can be analyzed by their overall movement in a particular direction (e.g., toward the scheduled pickup location). A movement speed toward the scheduled pickup location that is less than a low threshold indicates that the rider is waiting at a location rather than progressing toward the scheduled pickup location.
The rider's phone includes an accelerometer. Use the accelerometer's data to determine if the rider is no longer moving toward the scheduled pickup location, at which point the system can direct the vehicle toward the location of the rider's phone.