A patent filed by Ford Global Technologies, LLC, for an "Autonomous Police Vehicle" has just been published.
In its application, Ford observed that even though autonomous vehicles will be programmed to obey traffic laws, their programming could be overridden by human drivers. "Thus, there will still be a need to police traffic."
Ford said in its patent application that "[r]outine police tasks, such as issuing tickets for speeding or failure to stop at a stop sign," could be automated so that human police officers could perform tasks that cannot be automated.
Its patent application described "autonomous police vehicles that can, on behalf of human police officers, perform automated tasks such as enforcing traffic laws and issuing tickets/citations to drivers that violate the traffic laws."
In Ford's vision, its automated police vehicle could enforce traffic laws "by identifying violators, pulling over offending vehicles, capturing an image of license [plate] of the offending vehicle, determining a driver of the offending vehicle, receiving an image of the driver's license (if a human is driving the vehicle), authenticating the driver's license, determining whether to issue a warning or a ticket, and communicating with the vehicle regarding the warning/ticket decision and an indication that the offending vehicle is free to leave."
Learn more: Ford Patent.