Amazon self-driving car release date, news: patent reveals online retailer's foray into autonomous driving

Amazon is no longer simply just an online retailer having established other ventures such as Amazon Video, an internet video on demand service, and Amazon Alexa, an intelligent personal assistant, but the latest reports suggest that the company is also making its foray into autonomous driving technology.

Amazon was recently granted a patent titled "Lane Assignments for Autonomous Vehicles," which was filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office back in November 2015.

According to the abstract, the patent involves a "roadway management system that can generate lane configurations for a road way or a portion of the roadway" and "determine the direction of travel for lanes in a roadway and direct autonomous automobiles to enter the roadway in a particular lane."

This new system will enable self-driving cars to interact with different types of transportation data such as vehicle information, destination details, environment details, roadway rules, roadway status, lane configurations, among others.

This roadway management system is particularly useful as currently, autonomous vehicles have to information about reversible lanes which could contribute to collisions with oncoming traffic. This also prevents full optimization of routes. It is said that Amazon could apply this system to its autonomous delivery trucks and vans in order to keep shipping costs to a minimum.

Unfortunately, the patent did not reveal specific information regarding Amazon's plans for the self-driving car segment — whether it would produce its own vehicles like Tesla, utilize a ride-sharing strategy like Uber or just develop the technology for automakers like Google's Waymo and Apple, though the latter has yet to officially confirm this.

Nevertheless, Amazon has long been rumored to be working on its own autonomous driving technology. Based on the patent, the project is headed by James Christopher Curlander, the technical adviser at Prime Air, Amazon's autonomous drone-based delivery system.

Amazon has not commented on the latest reports about its plans for self-driving cars and autonomous driving technology.