Object search service employing an autonomous vehicle fleet

A method performed by a computing device, comprising:

• receiving an object search request from a user of the computing device, the object search request identifies a specific object for which a search is performed in a geographic area;
• causing an autonomous vehicle to passively search images captured by the autonomous vehicle for the specific object in the geographic area while the autonomous vehicle travels in the geographic area, wherein a route of the autonomous vehicle is set by a third-party user independent of the object search request;
• and
• receiving an image captured by the autonomous vehicle responsive to the autonomous vehicle passively searching the images for the specific object in the geographic area.

A method performed by a server computing system, comprising:

• receiving a search request from a computing device, the search request identifies a specific object for which a search is performed in a geographic area;
• identifying an autonomous vehicle to perform the search in the geographic area;
• transmitting a request to the autonomous vehicle, wherein the request causes the autonomous vehicle to passively search images captured by the autonomous vehicle for the specific object in the geographic area while the autonomous vehicle travels in the geographic area;
• receiving a subset of the images captured by the autonomous vehicle responsive to the request, wherein a set of received images received by the server computing system comprises at least the subset of the images captured by the autonomous vehicle;
• selecting an image from the set of the received images based on the search request;
• and
• transmitting the image to the computing device.