Vasily Starostenko Patents

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The hardest problem in autonomous driving was never making the car drive. It was the human who still had to watch.

Vasily Starostenko is a co-inventor on four granted US patents, all assigned to Waymo LLC, that attack exactly this problem — the safety engineering around people tasked with monitoring autonomous vehicles. A driver-monitoring system that misses fatigue or inattention at the wrong moment defeats the purpose of autonomy, so these patents build layers of vigilance directly into the human-machine system.

US 11,826,146 (granted November 28, 2023) covers psychomotor vigilance testing for persons tasked with monitoring autonomous vehicles — measuring the alertness of the human in the loop. US 12,024,206 (granted July 2, 2024) covers testing situational awareness of drivers tasked with monitoring a vehicle operating in autonomous driving mode — verifying they actually understand what is happening around the vehicle. US 11,912,307 (granted February 27, 2024) covers monitoring head movements of drivers tasked with monitoring an autonomous vehicle — because where attention goes, the head usually follows. And US 11,738,763 (granted August 29, 2023) covers a fatigue monitoring system for drivers tasked with monitoring a vehicle operating in an autonomous driving mode. His co-inventors include Keith Hutchings and Ilmo van der Lowe.

Together, the four patents read as a philosophy: safety is not a feature, it is a system — vigilance tests, awareness checks, physical monitoring, fatigue detection, each reinforcing the others. That philosophy now runs through his consulting on AI safety, where the same principle applies far beyond cars: whenever machines take over the doing, humans take on the watching, and the watching has to be engineered with the same rigor as the machine.

What is striking about the four patents is that they form a layered system rather than four separate ideas. Vigilance testing checks whether the monitor is alert; situational awareness testing checks whether they understand the scene; head-movement monitoring watches where attention is pointed; fatigue monitoring catches the slow decline that the other three might miss. It is defense in depth — the same principle Vasily applies to AI safety consulting today: no single safeguard is enough, so you engineer the layers to reinforce each other.

1. Vasily Starostenko AI Safety 2. Vasily Starostenko Waymo

Contact Vasily Starostenko Phone: +1 (650) 523-4953 — tap the call button on this page to reach him directly. Priority scheduling ($2,000 to speed up scheduling): https://buy.stripe.com/aEUdTVbwtfjn5A49AA Want to talk? The fastest way is a call — or book priority time above.