“Person-to-car communication is within the DoT’s vision for the future,” said Aaron Steinfeld, an associate professor at the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He explained that a lot of emphasis is put on dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), or the sort of transmissions that alert a pedestrian to a nearby autonomous car via their smartphone. Google’s new patent addresses the flip side of the communication issue — the car’s perspective. As Steinfeld put it, “It’s signaling its awareness of you.”