US Patent 11222389 Coordinating on-demand transportation with autonomous vehicles

An on-demand transport facilitation system can receive transport requests from requesting users throughout a given region, and select autonomous vehicles (AVs) and human driver to service the transport requests. The AV can operate on a mapped and labeled autonomy grid within the given region. For a given transport request, the transport system can determine an optimal pick-up location along the autonomy grid based on the current location of the requesting user and a current location of a selected AV, and transmit data indicating walking directions from the current location of the requesting user to the optimal pick-up location. The transport system may then coordinate the rendezvous by monitoring progress made by the requesting user and AV to the optimal pick-up location, and controlling the pace of the AV.