Toronto, Ontario — Ford Motor Co. has filed a patent application that will remove personally identifiable information (PII) from vehicle sensor data using private versus public identification.
According to the patent application—which was published on April 30th under the patent number US11972015B2—to remove personal identifiable information from the vehicle, data would be captured using a vehicle’s sensors.
The patent notes that “object detection (would be) performed on the sensor data to create a semantic labeling of objects in the sensor data.”
From here, “a model (would be) utilized to classify regions of the sensor data with a public or private labeling and a PII filter.”
As such, vehicles with this system in place would separate collected data via private or public channels with personal data being anything from textual information like names, addresses and birthdays to photographs of people, house addresses, vehicle license plates or biometrics.
While there is no guarantee that this patent will ever make it to the manufacturing stage, Ford’s idea is just one way that automakers can help protect consumer data by ensuring that private information can be separated and more easily removed from a vehicle.
To read the full patent, click here.
